


we are what we pretend to be

by C_AND_B



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Identity Reveal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-05
Updated: 2017-04-05
Packaged: 2018-10-15 03:50:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 25,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10549598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/C_AND_B/pseuds/C_AND_B
Summary: After the unrestricted office access, and the flowers, and the surprise visits to Catco, everyone just kinda starts to assume Kara and Lena are dating, and maybe they should let them. (AKA, Lena and Kara really just date whilst pretending they're fake dating).





	

**Author's Note:**

> So this got really out of hand but fuck it, welcome to trope city. Sorry for any mistakes - proof reading was a bitch and, you know, hope it isn't shit, etc.

Lena tries to convince herself that she has absolutely no idea how it all came to this, that it’s completely inexplicable, that she isn’t to be blamed in the slightest for what is happening. But, if she really thinks about it, she’s almost certain she knows exactly how it came down to this.

In all honesty, it takes Lena all of two seconds to work out where the confusion stems from. She can understand how people came to such misconceptions. She understands how they were reading the situations the way they were, even if it wasn’t the truth of the matter. She was a little less understanding about the fact that she liked it. She likes the gossip, and the whispers, and the rumours.

For once in her life, Lena Luthor was rather enjoying the stories going around about her. Well, her, and a certain doe eyed reporter that she was coming to realise she perhaps had a slight crush on. A certain doe eyed reporter that everyone else seemed to assume she had an obscene crush on if the exaggerated rumours of their relationship were anything to go by.

Lena supposes, on her end, the rumours started with unrestricted access to her office. She’d never given that out before. Jess knew that. Her security team knew that. Hell, the janitor knew that. It was common knowledge that Lena liked her privacy, and her secrets, and having her own space to think through her thoughts without interruption or question. Her office walls rivalled the ones she had built perfectly inside herself throughout the years.

She knew it looked weird. She knew that people were acutely aware of the fact that she generally avoided the press, that, given her name and the reputation that came along with it, she treated reporters like the plague. She also knew that she let Kara in because she wanted to talk to her, to know her, to be her friend, to have someone who would shape her side of the story in a good way for once - she had gotten those things, she was proud of those things, apparently everyone had assumed she was getting much more out of it.

She reckons it all escalated at the gala, and the events that led up to it - namely her unscheduled visit to Catco. She probably shouldn’t have gone to invite Kara in person but Lena figured there was less of a chance of Kara saying no if she had to do it to her face.

She paid no heed to the whispers circulating as she entered, too consumed by her own thoughts, too focused on her ‘mission’ to care about the confused looks being shared, and the knowing smirks being passed around as money slipped from hand to hand. In the end, Kara gladly accepted her proposal with a bright smile, and Lena continued to be oblivious to the implications of her display.

There’s no doubt in her mind that she pushes it further the moment she caters the event especially to Kara’s taste - no one would believe potstickers appeared at a gala that expensive without being for someone in particular. Evidently no one had believed her considering the amount of her night spent fending off questions about it ( _who are they for? Someone special in Lena Luthor’s life? Got a crush on some cute delivery girl?_ )

Then Kara saved her life, believed in her against the odds, gave her the strength to fight against the nagging voice in the back of her mind screaming that maybe this would finally be the thing that would make Lillian love her. Kara’s smile reminded her that Lillian’s love wasn’t a love worth throwing your morals away for. Kara’s strength made her feel like she had it in her to fight until her last breath. Kara’s belief in her gave her the courage to at least try and stand up for herself against her family for once in her life.

Kara, not Supergirl, Kara - though she had her suspicions that such a distinction was redundant.

She sent flowers. A lot of flowers. Arguably too many flowers, but, Lena would personally argue that there weren’t enough flowers. Kara deserved more than an office full for what she did, for sticking up for her even when the evidence stacked up, for literally flying into a possible (and eventual) kryptonite explosion zone just to save her. Kara deserved the world but even Lena, with all her resources, couldn’t quite achieve that so instead she settled for enough flowers to set off the allergies of everyone in the Catco building.

She understands how the flowers perpetuated the whole dating theory. As a bystander she probably would have come to that conclusion too, after all, she did personally deliver some of the bouquets because they were maybe also a little bit ‘ _I could possibly have a crush on you and maybe want to appear as a threat to other admirers in your life_ ’ flowers - not that Kara had picked up on that. Kara, in fact, seemed to be the only one who hadn’t quite picked up on that.

Truthfully, she set herself up for this. She set them up for this. Although, even with all of that, the real clincher seemed to be the ice cream date, that wasn’t actually a date, if the fact that it was plastered across the front page of every gossip rag Lena had stumbled upon that morning, was any basis.

It also appeared to feature in Catco. The magazine that Kara worked for. The magazine that Kara reported for. Lena wondered if Kara had seen this yet, if she had known about it before it went to print, if she was offended or flattered or an odd amalgamation of both. Lena mostly just imagines her to be blushing and fending off incessant questions... or perhaps she was actually walking straight into Lena’s office waving a magazine around wildly, talking a mile a minute in a manner far too unintelligible for Lena to comprehend.

Of course she had seen it.

Of course they were going to have to talk about it.

Lena should really have prepared herself to talk about it. She could have thought up some quick jokes that made it seem like she wasn’t internally freaking out. She could have prepared herself for all eventualities - angry Kara, amused Kara, annoyed Kara, ineffably confused Kara.

“So, you know,” Lena begins, effectively cutting off Kara’s rambling because; whilst she finds it stupidly charming, she knows they’ll never actually get to the heart of the matter if she doesn’t take charge (though she maybe should have let Kara run on a little bit longer if only to prolong the calm before the storm, to attempt to avoid the awkwardness that was sure to follow).

“I want to make a joke about not even me being able to stay oblivious to this but honestly it took three congratulations and Snapper slapping a copy on my desk for me to realise.” That sounded about right. Lena could clearly picture Kara skipping through her day, stuck in her own head, too focused on the weight of the world on her shoulders to pay attention to second rate news.

She could also clearly picture the crinkle on Kara’s brow when she figured it out or, more precisely, got startled by the sharp sound of paper slapping against her desk and finally took the time to read the words written boldly across the page.

“I’m sorry.” Lena’s not entirely sure what it is that she’s apologising for. Sorry you’ve been lumped in with the Luthor name? Sorry people haven’t clicked that you’re entirely out of my league? Sorry there have apparently been people watching us every time we so much as waved at one another from across the road by the looks of the photos?

“Why are you apologising? You didn’t write the articles and I’m the one who practically begged you to get ice cream with me, although I-“

“Meant it to be friendly. I know that. We’re friends.” Lena cuts in. She’s surprised by the sudden part of her that’s begging not to hear Kara say the words, surprised by the intensity of it, the panic she feels bubbling up in her chest.

It’s not like she hasn’t thought about it, about Kara, in a way that’s more than friendly. She’s thought about it. Of course, she’s thought about it. Lena’s not sure there’s a person in the world that could meet Kara and not at least think about what it would be like to be with her, to date her, to kiss her. But she played it off as admiration. Something meaningless. Something casual. A kind of infatuation shared between preschoolers but apparently somewhere between exclusive interviews and hidden meanings in flowers Lena’s feelings had morphed into something a little stronger.

“Right, yeah. _Yes_. Friends. Not girlfriends or _secret lovers_ as they’re calling it these days.” Kara drops onto the couch beside her and Lena allows herself to chuckle at the tone of her voice - the way that Kara sounds half confused, and half scandalised by the title.

“I really am sorry you’ve been dragged into the spotlight like this.” She never meant for Kara to get pushed into the camera frame the way she has been, never meant for her to become the topic of articles instead of the writer of them. Although, she’ll admit she is a little less sorry about the consequences the rumours have for her.

She personally found out about it all a little over three hours ago and already L-Corp stock was up, she closed a deal that she was sure she would receive a definite no for, and more articles about her were being published - one’s that, although mainly about her ‘new lover’ actually mentioned her fresh vision for the company and not just the xenophobic nature of her family. Even the one security guard who always looked like she wanted to slap Lena in the face had smiled at her that morning.

It had been nothing but great for her actually.

Minus the whole realisation that keeping a lid on her feelings might pose a harsher threat then she originally thought.

“I can handle it,” Kara states, subconsciously sitting up straighter, puffing her chest out like she’s trying to infuse a little piece of her Supergirl persona into normal, everyday Kara Danvers. It oddly looks like a child trying on their parents clothing, like a young girl trying to emulate something she doesn’t truly understand.

For a moment Lena wonders if she really knows Kara at all, if she’s even stumbled across half of the secrets she keeps hidden under arms of steel and a sunny disposition (she imagines the answer to be no and she’d be lying if she claimed it didn’t add to the intrigue, if she said that it didn’t spark something in her, didn’t spark that part of her that kept searching and searching until she found the answers she was looking for, even if it drove her to the brink of insanity).

“Could you handle it if I were to make a proposition?” She’s probably going to regret this. She’s definitely going to eventually regret this. But she feels like taking a risk, feels like attempting to keep being painted in a good light for once, feels like revelling in the fact that people actually believe Lena Luthor could get the walking personification of sunshine to have feelings for her.

“W-what kind of proposition?” Perhaps Lena should have phrased that slightly differently, a little less red room and a little more ‘I need a favour that isn’t of the sexual variety’. Though, she will admit that the immediate blush that adorns Kara’s face as she speaks the words is charming enough to warrant the swell of embarrassment Lena feels about her choice of words.

“Look, Kara, I know it’s a little ridiculous, and it’s a lot to ask, but this is the first time a headline about me hasn’t been bad, hasn’t made me out to be some heartless Luthor out for blood or an anti-alien tyrant - one that wasn’t written by you anyway.” That wasn’t a question. She meant to ask a question. She should ask the question, or she could just ignore that she even debated this whole thing and pretend this conversation never happened. The latter was probably the smarter choice but Kara already seemed to be talking and Lena was about three seconds away from having no way out.

“So you want to be in a fake relationship?” Well, Kara caught on quicker than imagined. Lena was ninety nine percent sure she was going to have to awkwardly spell it out word by word for Kara. She’s still not sure she would have put it so bluntly though. In fact, she personally would have actively avoided using those terms at all - it made it feel weird (it was kind of weird though).

“More like, just be as we usually are and let the press have their field day. Maybe never expressly say no if people ask. Hold hands in public a little bit if you’re willing.” She was making this weirder. She could have just said yes. If she’s just said yes then she wouldn’t have accidentally let the hand holding thing slip out which, truthfully, was a rather needless ask considering Kara’s apparent love for it already - her tactile nature was definitely part of the reason they were in this mess in the first place.

“That’s-“

“You know what, I’m sorry Kara, this is a terrible idea and I shouldn’t drag you any further into this, you don’t des-”

“I’ll do it,” Kara cuts in sharply, looking both shocked at Lena’s rambling and the fact that she was apparently agreeing to this whole thing, and truthfully Lena is too. Yes, Kara is undoubtedly selfless, and yes, she had done more for Lena in the past few months of knowing her than most people in her whole life, but this was something else entirely.

“What?” Lena was generally far more eloquent than this.

“If it helps you out, I’ll do it. At least it’ll get certain people off my back for two seconds.” Something tells Lena that Kara will have a whole new bunch of people on her back after this. There was absolutely no way revealing that, for all intents and purposes, you actually were dating a Luthor, was not going to end with people telling you that it was a terrible idea, and questioning whether or not you had lost your sanity, or had been secretly brainwashed.

Although, in spite of that, there were definitely other parts of that sentence that Lena found herself focusing on. Namely the ones that implied people were pursuing Kara. It’s not like she was surprised people liked Kara - she was sweet, and caring, and Lena wasn’t blind to the muscle underneath her demure little sweaters. There was also the fact that even Lena, who barely left her office, had managed to hear about the James Olsen debacle which was presumably an ongoing thing.

“Oh, do you have... other interested parties.” Probably that ‘Mike of the Interns’ man-child, the one that was definitely not human, the one that looked at Kara in a way that always irked Lena to a degree that she couldn’t explain. She supposes some people might be inclined to call it jealousy. She personally preferred to call it watching out for Kara’s best interests.

“Other?” Kara lifts her brow in, what Lena thinks is somewhat an imitation of her, and _shit_. There’s silence for a second as Kara seems to be adamantly waiting for an answer but Lena can play this off. She’s Lena Luthor, if anyone could lie their way out of a slipup, it’s her (certainly not Little Miss _I-was-having-coffee-with-Kara-Danvers-when-you-called_ sitting beside her).

“Yes, other. I _am_ currently your fake girlfriend; I’d have to be interested,” Lena quips with a smirk and receives a slow nod from Kara in response.

“Right, of course.”

“So other suitors?” James. Mike. Winn that magically appeared alongside Kara at her gala - though that one seemed to be on its last legs. They could start a club. Lena just might join if this whole thing ends in the disaster she imagines it will.

“Just a couple, no biggie. I just always feel bad about it I guess and then I get stuck in this endless loop of _I like you_ and _I don’t like you_.” Of course she did. Of course mild mannered, adorable, kind hearted, Kara Danvers had trouble saying no, or hurting someone’s feelings, even at the expense of her own comfort. But Lena won’t take advantage of it, at least, not beyond this massive thing she’s already asked of Kara (somehow she thinks she’s already pushed her luck with that one).

“Well I’d be honoured to keep them off your back, and of course you can have any and all L-Corp exclusives.” It’s the least she can do. There may also be the added advantage of giving Kara extra excuses, beyond her complete lack of self care when it comes to food, to come see her. That was definitely a plus. That and the fact that, she now had a new excuse to invite Kara to any and all ridiculous events beyond awkwardly repeating that she was Lena’s only friend. Once was enough.

“Thanks, Lena,” Kara says softly and Lena scoffs.

“It’s you who should be getting thanks, Kara.” She takes a glance at her watch, takes a second to lament the fact that she’s going to have to cut this short, then looks back up and catches Kara’s smiling eyes. “I actually have a meeting in five minutes but perhaps you could drop by my place later for dinner to talk logistics and so I can thank you properly.”

“P-properly?” Kara is blushing and there’s a second where Lena can’t quite figure out why before it all clicks. Apparently she was oh-for-two on the whole try not to make everything sound sexual front today, and apparently Kara was as easy to fluster as Lena assumed she would be.

“I’ve been told I make a wonderful lasagne. Let’s say eight?” That should give her enough time to actually do her work, pick up ingredients to fill her empty fridge, and even give her a free hour to spend making sure her apartment actually looks like she lives in it sometimes.

“Lasagne. Eight. I’ll be there.” Lena smiles gently.

“Good.”

“Great.”

“Great,” Lena copies, internally face palming when she does because since when did she become a third grader with a crush on their best friend?

“Good,” Kara lets out and Lena can’t help the laughter that slips from her lips. She’s thankful that the musical sound of Kara’s laugh follows on immediately after. She’s not sure how long she spends actually laughing, and how long she spends simply caught up in the sound of Kara’s giggles, but she does know she’d happily do it for hours.

“Miss Luthor you’re-“Jess bursts in. It’s almost comical the way her eyes widen at the sight of Kara in Lena’s office, at the sight of them sitting a little too close to just be friends, at the sight of Lena actually smiling with abandon for once in her adult life. “Oh, my apologies Miss Luthor, I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

“It’s fine, Jess. Kara was just leaving.”

“Yes. I was. I was leaving, leaving my girlfriend, my girlfriend who I’m leaving but not like _leaving_ leaving, just-“

“Kara, darling,” Lena cuts in with a chuckle. The term of endearment slips out like it’s something she always says, like she’s never called Kara anything else, like they really are something more. It makes her think they could actually pull this off but that might be getting way too ahead of herself considering Kara seemed to be rather terrible at lying.

“Right. Bye... babe.” Kara kisses her cheek before she takes her leave, and Lena knows she’s blushing but she refuses to pay it any heed, refuses to let Jess’s knowing smirk get to her, refuses to think too much into the fact that she stays happily sedated by Kara’s lips and her own overactive daydreams throughout her meeting, and the one after it (and maybe the one after that too).

She doesn’t let herself think about how terrible of an idea this whole thing is, or that she’s maybe, also, sort of, a little bit excited.

Should she feel so excited?

* * *

 

Lena’s nervous. Nervous enough that she cut her finger chopping tomatoes for a salad, burnt herself taking the lasagne out the oven, and all but fell on her face tripping over her rug as she made her way towards the rapping on her door.

She shouldn’t be. This isn’t a real date. This isn’t even a fake date. This is just two friends having dinner whilst they discuss the lie they’re going to openly spread around the city. Simple. Normal. Except that it is both not simple and not normal because Lena had legitimately asked Kara to be her fake girlfriend and Kara had said yes, and now they were just casually going to eat the secret recipe lasagne that she learned to make from her nanny as a child.

It was ridiculous.

The whole thing was absolutely absurd.

She opens the door with a smile anyway.

“Hey, Lena.”

“Hey, Kara. Come in.”

“These are for you.” Lena smiles at the flowers thrust into her hands. They’re beautiful. Not as beautiful as the nervous smile on Kara’s face or the fidgeting hands that push glasses back up the bridge of her nose to shield vibrant blue eyes. The exact eyes that are the entire reason Lena feels nervous.

It wasn’t the situation. She realised that thirty minutes into her panic. Thirty minutes into talking herself into thinking she was fine, she realised that she had spent her whole life navigating uncomfortable situations and planning schemes, but she had done neither of those things with Kara Danvers. Kara who always made her palms threaten to sweat, and whose smile made her heart stumble over itself sometimes when she wasn’t paying enough attention to calm it down.

“Thank you,” Lena says simply because what else are you supposed to say to your friend who is doing you a favour and still shows up with your favourite flowers that are usually next to impossible to obtain. Lena takes Kara’s coat a second later, the motion more reflex than solid thought.

“Dinner smells delicious.” Kara grins, inhaling the scent happily. Lena ignores the way her table shifts a few inches towards Kara at the action. She’s actually getting rather fantastic at ignoring the odd things that always occur around Kara. On the outside, that is. On the inside she’s cataloguing every single last one.

“Let’s hope it tastes that way too.”

“I have a hard time believing there’s anything Lena Luthor can’t do if she puts her mind to it.” Not for the first time, Lena wonders what she ever did to earn such belief in her. Sure, she had essentially saved the entire alien populous, and sure, she had openly betrayed her mother for the greater good, and sure, there was that one time she shot a man for Kara’s sister but no one else cared. No one else believed her. No one else trusted her. No one else gave her a chance.

Except Kara.

“Singing. I’m absolutely terrible - can’t even begin to carry a tune.” She wasn’t terrible. She was just... terrible. It’s why Lillian had pushed her towards the piano, and the violin, and the cello after that because what kind of Luthor couldn’t play at least three instruments. She learned to play the harmonica on her own accord and, in her opinion, the look of horror on Lillian’s face was definitely worth it.

“Well I’ve been told I have golden pipes so I can carry it for both of us.” It doesn’t surprise Lena. She can see Kara dancing around her kitchen in the morning, yelling the latest number one at the top of her lungs. She can see Kara singing at her desk as she works, annoying Snapper to no end. She can see her singing at her sister until she joins in. She can see her singing in the car, and in the shower, and just on the street because the sun was shining and why the hell not.

“Any other secrets you’re hiding, Kara?” Lena asks and Kara falters for a split second before answering Lena’s question swiftly.

“Not as many as you I’m sure.” Maybe she was getting better at the whole lying thing, and the underhanded flirting thing that Lena would never actually call flirting out loud.

“Maybe we could play twenty questions since, you know, it’d be a little odd if I didn’t know my girlfriends favourite colour or, god forbid, I didn’t know that you were secretly allergic to peanuts.” Could Kryptonians even be allergic to an earthly substance?

“I’d love to, and, for the record, not allergic to peanuts... or anything actually, and red.” Well that answered that question. And brought about another. To the untrained eye Lena knows no one would have questioned Kara’s answer but she saw the way her shoulders dropped at the announcement that red was her favourite colour. She saw the way her eyes dimmed slightly. She noticed the way she crossed her arms over her chest, trying to close herself off.

“Red?” Lena implores because she thinks she might want to talk about it, thinks that maybe Kara needs someone to vent to after all this time, that maybe she can be that person. It’s the least she can give Kara. It’s the least Kara deserves.

“It reminds me of home,” Kara mumbles lowly.

“Wha-“

“Not so fast, Lena. It’s my turn to delve into your secret past,” Kara cuts in and Lena accepts it with a smile. She knows avoidance when she sees it, knows she’s certainly spent enough of her life avoiding question after question, never truly opening up. Until Kara.

“By all means, delve away.” Lena smirks as she directs Kara towards the table, pulls her chair out for her without second thought. She does spare a second thought for the soft smile Kara gives her. And maybe a third. And a fourth for good measure.

“Favourite fruit?” Kara blurts out.

“Really? That’s the question you’re going with?” Lena laughs because of course Kara could have the chance to learn anything she wanted about her and decide that the first answer she wanted was what fruits Lena liked. Did Kara even like fruit? Lena didn’t think she could recall a time Kara wasn’t eating something that was begging to clog her arteries.

“And favourite colour was better?” _Touché_.

“Raspberries.”

“Why?” Kara asks earnestly, her brows drawn together like she’s as confused as she’s ever been. Lena wants to laugh at the absurdity of it, at the fact that Kara is watching her like she’s missing the last piece of the Lena jigsaw over a question on fruit. In the end she does laugh because Kara is waiting with bated breath for her answer and it amuses Lena to no end.

“Because they taste nice, Kara. Not every part of my life has a tragic back story. Sometimes fruit is just fruit.” Kara rolls her eyes at Lena’s tone but there’s a smile firmly planted on her face that tells Lena she’s as amused as she is aggravated by the sarcasm.

“Somebody is feeling extra feisty on home turf.”

“Maybe you just bring it out in me.” Lena smirks at the bashful smile on Kara’s face, on the faint blush that begins to dangerously crawl its way up her neck. She should really start a count on how many times she can fluster Kara in one night. She has a feeling it might get a little too high.

“Is that a good thing?” Kara looks nervous and for a brief second Lena wonders just how much fear Kara hides beneath steel skin and smiles, how much time she spends panicking that her friends aren’t really her friends, that someday they might all leave her behind.

Lena tentatively reaches a hand across the table and squeezes Kara’s when she finally finds it – honestly, if anyone was going to have abandonment issues it would be Kara, and if anyone was going to understand how it felt to lose everything you loved, everything you trusted, it would be Lena.

“You’ve never brought a bad thing to my life.” It feels a little too honest. It is a little too honest, and yet, Lena doesn’t hesitate to say the words. They’re out of her mouth before she can even attempt to catch them and honestly she doesn’t even try. It is the truth. When she first moved to National City she had been wary of Kara - walking in on friendly terms with Clark Kent could do that. But even if Kara accelerated the final downfall of her family, she also brought friendship and trust and those delicious donuts that she wouldn’t share the origin of (something told her they weren’t local).

“Your lasagne is definitely the best I’ve ever had.”Kara squeezes Lena’s hand one last time before letting go and shovelling far too much food into her mouth in a single move.

“Fantastic, I would hate to have to return my best in state trophy.” Lena revels in the chuckles Kara lets loose under her breath. “Did you always see yourself as a reporter?”

“When I was little I wanted to be a scientist. I suppose you could say it was my calling, my destiny, but my life went a little... off course. Then for a while I had no idea what I wanted to be, spent a few years as Cat Grant’s assistant before the day I met you.” So Kara was the infamous _Kiera_ she had heard so much about, the infamous Kiera that she almost tried to poach once upon a time. Perhaps she should have tried harder. Having Kara work under her could have been... fun.

“Me?”

“Yes, you, Lena. You made me realise that I wanted to be a reporter, that I wanted to give people a voice, that I wanted to find the truth even when everyone was so desperately trying to hide it. Maybe bring a few people to justice along the way since the pen is mightier than the sword and all.”

“Kara Danvers, fighting for truth, justice and the American way.” Kara blushes, poking at the scraps on her plate and Lena immediately wants to assure her that she meant nothing by it, that it was just a joke, that she thought Kara’s integrity and drive was admirable. Instead she lets Kara get her bearings, waits for her to look back up to catch her eyes in order to send her a reassuring smile - one that she hopes will convey all the things she’s rather terrible at saying with words.

“I know it sounds stupid.”

“Actually I think it’s a lovely concept.”

“Thank you.” Kara smiles softly, her eyes just as gentle as an understanding passes between them. The same kind of understanding Lena felt the first day they met, the first day she realised she would gladly learn everything there was to know about Kara Danvers if given the chance. “So, what’s your middle name?”

“I’m sorry, Kara, but that’s definitely a third date question.” Or a never question. Perhaps more a never question. Lena thinks about it for a second... definitely a never question.

“Come on, it can’t be that bad.”

“It _can_ and it _is_.”

“You’re really not gonna tell me?” Kara pouts. Lena almost gives in, debates it harder than anything before in her life because it’s charming, and endearing, and it almost makes Lena let slip one of her most embarrassing secrets. Thankfully, she is stronger than that or, at least, smart enough to look away from it for long enough to say no.

“Really,” Lena says steadfastly and Kara narrows her eyes before sighing grandly and stopping her signature move.

“Fine. For now. But I will find out.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Lena says without a hint of sarcasm. “Maybe we should figure out how we want to go about this, about our fake relationship that is. What boundaries we should have, what our story should be, who we’re lying to and who’s going to know it’s all a ruse.”

“Right, that’s smart. So, um, personally I think we should just lie to everyone because, I don’t know about you, but I have a habit of slipping up when I can’t remember who knows a secret and who doesn’t. Also I don’t want Mo- _Mike_ to hear from Winn that this isn’t one hundred percent real and think he can hit on me again since that’s one of the reasons we’re even doing this.”

“I can do that.” She could gladly do that. Lena can actually think of few things she would happily do more. “So how’d we get together?”

“We could just stick to the original story, just find some point to slip in that we got tired of dancing around it and I kissed you.” It seems like a smart idea. Well, the _stick mostly to the truth_ thing sounds like a smart idea. Telling people that Kara got the nerve to kiss her before she got the nerve to kiss Kara? Now that’s enough to make Lena scoff, genuinely scoff.

“ _You_ kissed _me_?” She asks incredulously.

“Yeah?”

“No one would believe it.” It just wasn’t credible. If anything Kara would fumble, and bumble, and stumble through her confession of feelings and Lena would just get impatient and kiss her. Or Kara would be excitedly talking about something one day and Lena would kiss her. Or Kara would save her life dressed as Supergirl and Lena would forget that she wasn’t supposed to be aware of her secret identity and accidentally kiss her. Or Kara would breathe and Lena would kiss her because really anything that Kara does is a kissable offence.

“They would totally believe it!”

“I hate to disagree but I’m going to disagree.” Lena raises an eyebrow in challenge, bites her lip to keep herself from laughing, and as Kara’s eyes dart haphazardly around her face she has a feeling that she’s going to win this one.

“Fine. You kissed me. Happy?”

“After kissing you? Undoubtedly.” Lena smirks and Kara does the laugh that Lena’s almost sure she saves for her. The one that’s a little too breathless. The one where she tries to talk but can’t seem to find the right words. It’s Lena’s favourite laugh, maybe even her favourite sound all together.

“I can’t believe it’s taken me so long to realise how much of a dork you are,” Kara says when her chuckles subside, only to have them come back again when Lena gasps dramatically.

“Says the woman who uses the word _golly_ unironically.”

“It’s a good word.”

“In the fifties sure. Speaking of kissing though...” Arguably not her best segue (also not her worst if you look at her previous track record) but she needs to ask this. They need to discuss this. It’d be a little wrong of her to just presume and then plant one on Kara when she least expects it. She doesn’t want to make her uncomfortable, or make this situation more uncomfortable, or even make herself uncomfortable because she’s spending so much time knowing she made Kara uncomfortable.

“I’d be okay with it.” Lena almost chokes on air. _Almost_. Somehow she manages to keep her composure enough to continue the conversation without spluttering up a lung.

“You would?”

“It would help people believe our relationship because, you know, people kiss when they’re dating, or I kiss people when I’m dating them. Maybe you don’t. I shouldn’t assume. Do you?” Lena nods frantically before she comes to the realisation that she must look like an absolute idiot and decides to use her words instead.

“I kiss people. Girls. I kiss girls.” Apparently her words weren’t all that much better.

“I’m a girl.”

“Yes you are.” This was... odd. Lena busies herself with clearing the table to avoid looking Kara in the eye. She wasn’t quite sure what to do with this information, with the fact that Kara would let her kiss her if she were to try. She could kiss Kara. Fake kiss. But can a kiss ever really be fake? Can an action so telling ever not be real? Is it truly character or is it her?

Lena kissing Kara.

Lena could kiss Kara.

“Are you sure you’re really okay with this? All of this?” Lena asks because she has to check, because she has to be sure before they really get into this, before they get too far in to back out without at least some repercussions.

“Yes, Lena, I’m sure and you don’t have to keep checking.”

“I just don’t want to take advantage of your kindness.”

“You’re not and you won’t.” Kara sounds so sure that it’s enough to convince Lena the same, enough to make her believe they can come away from this unscathed and not with Kara hating Lena for getting her into this ridiculous situation, for letting the press completely invade her life.

“OK but now I’ve got to ask a really serious question,” Lena asks seriously, taking Kara’s hand into her own as she firmly catches her gaze.

“Anything. Ask away,” Kara replies, just as serious, with just as much conviction as always.

“How do you feel about the X-Files?”

“I feel like this is the beginning of a beautiful fake relationship.” Lena laughs as she tugs Kara towards her couch. They’re only a few episodes in when they fall asleep. That is to say, they’re three episodes in when Kara’s head drops solidly to her shoulder. It’s when Lena starts the fourth that a half asleep Kara lies down and pulls Lena along with her, holding her tightly against her chest.

Lena doesn’t think about how her neck will hurt in the morning, doesn’t think about the subtle ache that will be in her body all throughout the next day. She simply falls asleep to the solid beat of Kara’s heart and the warmth of her arms, both of which are gone when she wakes up, though the smell of Kara’s shampoo still lingers on her couch pillow, and Lena can’t help but grin at the smiley face plastered on a post-it note that rests by her head.

The beginning of beautiful fake relationship indeed.

* * *

 

They decide to start the ruse with a simple dinner. The kind of dinner that they normally had, which is to say Kara would take Lena to some place she would never even begin to think of going by herself and then proceed to eat more than humanly possible, whilst Lena watched on with an amused smile and occasional joke about the consumption. Simple. Calming. Just... nice.

But now Lena was just waiting. Honestly she hadn’t quite meant to be ready to leave thirty minutes early but, then again, she also hadn’t imagined herself to be the kind of person who had so much energy buzzing around that they couldn’t even stand to do some last minute paperwork. It was after she stared at a particular contract for twenty minutes without taking a single word in that she gave up all together in favour of getting ready.

She thought she could waste enough time (it hadn’t wasted enough time). She already had to reapply her lipstick for the fourth time after nervously gnawing on her lips. She’d changed her outfit more times than she could count. Tried on every pair of shoes in her closet to make sure the ones she chose were definitely the best. She even had time to make a cup of tea - some herbal tea that claimed it would calm her and only really succeeded in making her more anxious when it didn’t seem to be having any real effect.

Lena shouldn’t have agreed to let Kara pick her up. Logically, yes, it made more sense for them to go together, and yes, it would make for fantastic photos to see them walk hand in hand together down the road, and yes, it would strengthen the ruse. But logical thought couldn’t explain why she felt nervous to have dinner with her friend, why she couldn’t stop straightening her dress that wasn’t the slightest bit crinkled, why she perhaps, sort of, practised her ‘hello’ in her bathroom mirror whilst meticulously applying her eyeliner.

It was a fake date.

The pickup was all part of an elaborate plan.

They were just eating.

(Lena was still nervous).

She rushes to the door when she hears timid knocks. Then she waits a few seconds with her hand on the door handle because she’s supposed to be calm and collected, not sprinting precariously across hardwood flooring in new heels like some kind of crush addled lunatic.

She’s not sure what she expects when she opens the door. She maybe expected to find her eyes wandering like usual, or to get swept up in Kara’s grin and forget herself for a moment. She expected Kara’s nervous grin and glittering eyes hidden behind glasses that were always suspiciously too clean (like someone was over cleaning them to keep up appearances).

That’s not what Lena finds.

Lena finds a soaked Kara Danvers smiling sheepishly at her as she shrugs her shoulders in a motion that says both _sorry_ and _I can’t control the weather_. It’s cute. The mangled flowers that she thrusts into Lena’s hands in way of greeting and apology are cute too.

“You’re soaked?” She doesn’t mean to pose it as a question. It’s rather obvious as Lena regards the puddle forming at Kara’s feet. It probably stems more from curiosity as to how she even got to that point in the first place. Why walk in the rain when you could fly? Hell, why walk in the rain when you could just as easily call a cab? Or _fly on a bus_?

“Yeah, well, it seemed like a nice night so I’d thought I’d walk, maybe lure some press along the way since they’ve taken to hanging around my apartment-“Lena opens her mouth to apologise before she’s quickly waved off by Kara who continues on. “By the time I was halfway here the heavens opened up and obviously you can see the result of that.” She points needlessly to the water covering the hallway outside Lena’s door but the action at least serves to make Lena realise she’s just left Kara standing awkwardly outside, dripping with rain.

“Where are my manners? Do come in, Kara. We should probably get you out of those wet clothes.” Lena shuffles over to allow Kara entry. She doesn’t miss the blush on her face and she laments her inability to not come out with inappropriate comments all the time, even if accidentally.

“But dinner-“ Honestly if anyone was going to argue for food over health and comfort, of course it would be Kara. Just last week Lena had watched her eat two large pizzas to herself as she claimed that she was just hungry after having not eaten all day (a fact Lena knew to be false because she also saw her eat two foot long subs at lunch), she then proceeded to eat a whole box of donuts and Lena would have wondered how she ate it all and stayed in shape if she didn’t know _exactly_ how she did.

“Can wait. Can’t have you getting ill now can we? Besides, the place I had in mind probably wouldn’t let you in looking like a drowned rat, no matter how cute a drowned rat you make.” Though the answer to how cute was very cute. Stupidly cute. Cute enough that Lena immediately begins to throw out the whole _let’s get caught feeding each other chocolate cake_ plan in favour of _let’s eat takeout and save the lie fest for next week_ plan.

“I’ll try to take that as a compliment,” Kara chuckles.

“You should. Now come on, I can put those straight in the dryer.” It was a shame really. Lena imagined Kara must have looked nice before she stuck in the deluge. Truthfully, she had been quite looking forward to seeing what smart/casual/nerd outfit Kara pulled from her closet. The shirt with rolled up sleeves was definitely a good choice (with the added bonus that it undoubtedly gave off an _I like girls_ vibe).

“Here?” Kara squeaks and Lena questions for a second whether she should say no. That is, until she looks forlornly at her immaculate flooring and decides that no matter how pretty and cute the drowned rat, you don’t let them destroy the one thing in your apartment that you genuinely put some thought or care into.

“Unless you want to drip water everywhere in my apartment.”

“But, I-I, um-“ Lena notices her shaking. She’d have to be blind not to. At first she thinks she must be cold, like most people would be in this temperature after being rained on, and then she wonders whether Kryptonians can even feel the cold. Maybe she was wrong about the Supergirl thing.

Or maybe Lena just made Kara nervous. She wasn’t the warmest of people, wasn’t the best at keeping up friendships or figuring out social interactions that weren’t underpinned by power struggles and the whiff of money. She probably should have offered to turn around, or given her a towel to hide behind, not just told her to perform a strip tease in the middle of her apartment. Except, Kara’s hands were already halfway towards her buttons. She was reaching to undo them. Maybe her prior assumption was right. Maybe she just needed a little help.

“Oh you must be freezing. Here.” Lena doesn’t hesitate to reach her own hands to undo Kara’s shirt. She doesn’t think about the consequences, or that it could be considered a little strange to start undressing your friend, slash fake girlfriend, in your home. She just acts. Acts fast enough that she’s already undone three in the times it takes for Kara to realise what’s happening and catch Lena’s hands.

It’s too late by then though. Lena has already revealed the suit beneath. It’s blaringly obvious with its blue hues and the beginnings of an all too familiar crest - though it brings warmth these days rather than fear. She stares. Then she stares some more. Never once does she risk looking up to catch Kara’s eyes. She does, however, take the chance to pull her hands out of a surprisingly gentle grip, one that offers up no resistance as Lena continues to finish the job and push the shirt to the floor.

She doesn’t spare a second thought for the loud slap it makes as falls against wood, simply runs her fingers along the crest silently. She knows what it means. Knows it’s more than a simple ‘s’. Lex once had her almost convinced it was a sign of war, a threat, a warning. _Almost_. But she’d read his notes, found the words _stronger together_ resonating in her soul, reminding her that more good had been done in a suit with that crest than behind the doors of LuthorCorp.

Ultimately though, it was meeting Kara that made her truly understand the meaning of it all. It was meeting Kara that made Lena believe there really could be people in your life that strengthened, rather than weakened, you.

She admires the meticulous stitching next, ponders upon how anyone managed to make such flexible and thin fabric bulletproof. She can feel Kara wavering under her silence like she wants to speak. Needs to speak. She feels her shiver under her careful inspection in a way that Lena knows is now definitely rooted in nerves and not the cold.

She _suspected_.

She _knew_.

But standing here... seeing it...

“Lena...” Kara begins nervously, timidly, fearfully. Lena knows she isn’t planning to finish the sentence. That all she wants is for Lena to actually say something instead of just blankly staring, that she just needed to fill a little bit of the silence to assuage even an inch of the panic crawling up her throat. Lena knows that she’s scared, so she looks up, offers Kara a friendly smile before reaching towards her face. Kara doesn’t move a millimetre as Lena slips off her glasses. She doesn’t say a word as Lena slowly folds them like she has all the time in the world, placing them on the table beside her door, before she releases Kara’s hair from the loose bun it’s been pulled into.

“You know, I could’ve guessed but it’s different seeing it in person.” It’s a strange sight - the amalgamation of both sides of Kara. A pensive face without glasses, the sight of only the top half of a suit that brings hope, tucked into trousers that are still creating puddles and a crumpled cape that she somehow miraculously managed to hide under her shirt.

Lena supposes Kara probably wanted to do this a little more dramatically, perhaps with a plan, or at least the actual intention or forethought of causing revelation. A little less haphazard. A little less of a surprise on herself and more of one on Lena. Truthfully, Lena can’t imagine having found out any other way than in a spur of forgetfulness or spontaneity.

“I wanted to tell you. I really did. I just-“ She doesn’t need the explanation. She might have. Once. Before she realised that Kara had long since overlooked the Luthor name, before she realised that Kara saw her as nothing more than Lena, her friend, the person she would believe in against all odds, the person she would pretend to date just so she could get some good press.

“Kara, you don’t have to explain. You do have to go take a warm shower though because I have a lot of questions and I’d like you to be comfortable when I inevitably go overboard.” She’s curious about everything. Where does she hide her boots? Does she still have her ship? How much more advanced is the technology on Krypton compared to Earth and how much smarter is Kara than everyone is giving her credit for? Something tells Lena the answer is a hell of a lot smarter.

“I’ll answer anything. Everything.”

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep, Kara Danvers.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” Kara grins one second and then she’s gone from Lena’s view in the next as the sound of her shower turning on reverberates throughout her apartment. Lena laughs at Kara’s casual display of her powers before picking up the wet clothes she left behind and throwing them in her dryer.

She picks out more comfortable clothes for the two of them to the soundtrack of Kara’s singing. Lena doesn’t even know why she’s surprised that Kara has a beautiful voice, especially since she had admitted to it herself. Apparently there was nothing she couldn’t do. Except maybe keep her secret properly (that one seemed to be a real issue). She tugs on sweatpants that she barely remembers owning as she leaves Kara’s own just outside the bathroom door, whispering their location as she does so and smiling to herself as she hears a muffled _thank you_ shouted back her way.

She’s struck by how casual it all seems as she calls for takeout, not once questioning what Kara would want, simply tagging her monstrous order onto the end of her own like its second nature. She’s shocked by how calm she feels as she patiently waits for Kara to finish her shower, how she doesn’t panic for a single second, doesn’t wonder about what to say when her friend returns but instead simply knows that she’ll know the right words the moment Kara gives her a cue.

“Thank you for the clothes and the not shouting at me thing,” Kara says slowly as she towels her hair, sitting down on the couch tentatively, before coming to rest about a foot farther away from Lena than she usually does. Lena stares at the chasm for a moment before taking it upon herself to close it.

“I understand the need for secrecy.” She really did. Like everyone, Lena had secrets of her own, none as big as _I’m an alien_ , but secrets nonetheless. She understands the risks involved in Kara’s secret, in knowing it, in keeping it. She knows the trust it entails. She also knows that not many people would be happy with Kara sharing it with a _Luthor_ and she won’t deny that it’s a somewhat reasonable fear given the family track record, and the words and slurs Lena had grown up hearing, had spent her formative years being told were the proper way to view extra terrestrial life. Sometimes it even surprises her that she didn’t turn out like them, that she didn’t make their same mistakes.

“I really am sorry I didn’t tell you sooner. I wanted to. I really wanted to but I-“Lena silences her with a gentle hand on her thigh and a warm smile she hopes conveys the sincerity of her next statement.

“Apology accepted, though, if you’d really like to cement it, I’d love to hear about Krypton.”

“You... you would?” She looks so shocked, so confused, so much like she’s waiting for the other shoe to drop, like she’s never really been asked before, or maybe she’d just never been asked by someone she felt alright sharing it with, someone who wouldn’t think she missed her home more than loved everything she had gained on Earth.

“I’m intrigued to know what kind of place managed to shape someone as ineffable as Kara Danvers.”

“Well, first of all it’s Kara Zor-El and Krypton... _Krypton was beautiful_.” There’s so much emotion packed into that one simple sentence and as the night progresses, as Kara reveals more, Lena realises that the reverence in Kara’s tone never wavers.

Lena listens to her share everything she can think of for hours, only occasionally butting in when she has a question that she’s dying to ask, or when Kara’s rambling too fast for her to understand what is even going on. She watches in awe as Kara comes alive talking about it. Her breath catches as she discovers Kara’s eyes can be brighter, that her smile can be wider, that her hands can gesticulate even more madly than usual as she searches for just the right words.

Kara stops, and starts, and gasps when something else comes to mind that she decides she absolutely must share in that exact moment. It’s in those seconds, as Kara bursts with words, and explodes with countless stories, and perfect descriptions, and foggy memories that Lena comes to the conclusion she doesn’t get to talk about it much. That along with keeping her secret, she has somehow kept all of this inside too.

It must be a burden. Kara describes how cute Kal-El (or Clark Kent as the world knew him) was as a baby, how she had been sent to protect him, and all Lena can think is that it must be a burden to be the last true child of Krypton. The last person who knew what a red sun looked like high up in the sky, trickling over the horizon. The last person to look at the world around them and know that colours were missing, that Earth’s spectrum was nothing compared to that of Krypton, of _home_.

She wonders how hard it must be, to have someone like you, who is still so wholly unlike you that they can never truly fill the void of what you’ve lost. She wonders how Kara’s heart must ache as he attempts their language, _her_ language, and somehow always gets it slightly wrong - too encumbered by his human nature, his almost human tongue.

Lena thinks Kara is beautiful as she loses herself in her memories. She thinks that Kara has never looked more herself, that she looks regal, and impassioned, and every part the extraordinary entity Lena knows her to be (even if she’s currently clad in sweatpants and an old college tee that Lena pulled from the back of her closet).

When Kara’s words peter out and she directs a look at Lena that she’s never seen before, but would fight the rest of her life to earn again, Lena convinces her to stay. She convinces the both of them that it’s for the press. She convinces herself that it’s all for show, to make up for missing a public dinner, that Kara stumbling out of her apartment in the early hours would make for a good photo.

Maybe it is.

But it’s also because Lena has never slept sounder than in Kara’s arms, has never felt more safe from the rest of the world, from her past. And because she thinks that after tonight Kara might need the solace of Lena’s touch just as much, might need a steady place to land when the nostalgia wears off and reality sets in. She may just be right if the thankful smile on Kara’s face is anything to go by, and the way she falls into bed beside Lena without second thought, curling into her like it’s as much a reflex as breathing.

When Lena falls asleep with a smile on her face, and the comfortable weight of Kara resting on her chest, she tells herself that next time... next time they’ll actually make it out of the door.

(She wouldn’t mind if they didn’t).

* * *

 

She’s running a little late.

She’s running a lot late.

But in her defence she does run a legitimate company and she’s not late enough that Kara is already awkwardly waiting in her apartment for her to finally be ready. And honestly, with her work squared away, her makeup done and her dress laid out on her bed all she really needed to do was put it on. So she was on time really. Except if you factor in the fact that Lena was also laid out on her bed having a small little panic. Just a casual ‘ _pre gala fake date with Kara Danvers_ ’ panic.

Nothing major.

It’s just that whilst showering Lena had stumbled upon the realisation that no matter what people think about her, and no matter her actions during her Veronica Sinclair phase, she wasn’t really a player (or a lady killer as some articles deemed her). In reality she was closed off and maybe a little bit scared of commitment because it usually lead to abandonment in her case, and so she wasn’t really sure how dating went.

Real or fake.

Should she hold Kara’s hand? Was that too juvenile? Should she police how much she looks at her? Should she look at her more? Had they cultivated enough inside jokes? And then there were the questions of whether or not Kara could even pull off pretending to like, or even be in love with, Lena.

Would people believe them? Maybe. Was this the most ridiculous idea she’d ever had? Probably. Was she going to sit up and stop being an overly afraid, over thinking idiot? Definitely.

It should be a simple thing. She’s dressed herself plenty of times before. She’s put dresses on before. She’s even put this exact dress on before without problem, except today, she is apparently having a problem. The problem being that as she attempts to slip it over her head, her arms get tangled and then the dress gets caught, and she’s just standing in her bedroom with her arms up over her head and no real clothing on her body.

That’s when she hears the gasp... and then subsequently remembers the words _just let yourself in_ that she had typed to Kara only a few hours prior. It’s in the moment that she manages to have the dress slip seamlessly onto her body and she catches the blush on Kara’s face that she realises she can’t wear a bra with the dress she’s wearing.

She’s not wearing a bra.

And she just flashed Kara.

Great.

“I’m so sorry, Lena. You texted and your doorman let me up and then the door was open and I didn’t think and then you were there and I saw some things, a couple of things, a pair of things one might say.” Lena had imagined something would go wrong. She was sure something would go wrong. But, even in her darkest imaginings she never conjured up this, never foresaw that she would accidentally bare herself to Kara. She had actually just flashed Kara her boobs. _Oh God._

“We can just forget all about this mortification.” That would be great. Incredibly great. The best.

“Oh gosh, I embarrassed you but, I mean, honestly you have nothing to be embarrassed about. They were... I could... here.” Kara unzips the back of her dress before Lena can contest the movement. She lets the fabric falls to her hips before Lena even realises what’s happening. Then she just stands there, bare chested, and Lena wants to be polite, wants to be courteous, wants to look away. She doesn’t look away. Lena stares until Kara pulls the straps of her dress back over her shoulders and she feels the air return to her lungs.

“Even?” Kara asks with a smile and all Lena can do is laugh. And then laugh some more. And a little bit more for good measure because of course that would be Kara’s main objective, of course she would put herself in an incredibly awkward situation just to make someone feel better. Make Lena feel better. She’s the sweetest thing ever but now that Lena has had a front row seat to legitimate abs, she finds her brain is still a little too addled to conjure a sensible answer. “Should I not have? Oh _Rao_ , was it weird? That was weird right? Sorry. You just- and then I just- because you looked so... and you know tit for tit, _I mean tat_ , though is that really better?” Kara continues unsurely and Lena finally springs into action.

“No, Kara, that was perfect. You’re perfect. Thank you.” Lena smiles fondly as she watches Kara visibly deflate at her reassurances.

“Phew! Um, r-ready to show me off to your competition then, let me harass them for some secrets so that Snapper can hopefully stop having the mid-life crisis that never ends.”

“More than ready.” Honestly Lena really is quite excited to watch how Kara interviews others, excited to see her ask hard hitting questions but hide them behind her signature smile like she’s simply enquiring how their wives are doing. But as Kara turns and she catches sight of her back still proudly on display she thinks attempting to keep her cool just became ten times harder.

She steps forward, grabbing Kara’s hip with a loose grip before speaking. “Wait, you forgot to-“ Her hand shakes as she first reaches for the zipper. She steadies it by the time she makes contact. Finds it trembling again as her knuckles caress each notch of Kara’s spine on their way up. Lena doesn’t move for a moment once she’s finished, then she watches the timid step her feet make, her front grazes Kara’s back gently. “Now we’re ready,” she whispers, imaging her words trickling torturously slowly down Kara’s neck like honey.

Definitely ten times harder.

Or maybe the event is ten times easier because Kara seems to have a sixth sense for when Lena no longer wants to be involved in a particular conversation, or when she wants the topic changed, or when she just generally wants to run to the bar and pretend someone hasn’t just tried to discreetly say that they’re on her side, _her anti-alien side._ A side that she is definitely not a part of. A side she thought she had made it clear she wasn’t a part of with the whole virus disabling ordeal.

It’s easy for Lena to press her hand to Kara’s back and wordlessly direct her to places she needs to go, or the ones she desperately wants to avoid. It’s easy to watch with affection as Kara makes jokes that have everyone laughing, even people Lena was sure hadn’t cracked a smile at one of these events in years.

It’s fun to watch Kara give her input on new inventions and innovations and the incredulous looks she receives when it actually makes perfect sense. It’s even more fun to watch Kara fill up her third plate and eat it with a casual air that Lena couldn’t even summon when she ate her first and only plate (the fun only increases as Kara shovels food into her mouth whilst simultaneously grilling people for information. Fun enough that Lena ignores the _help me_ looks they send her in favour of silently cheering Kara on).

She’s just challenged Kara to see how many quail eggs she can fit in her mouth at once, and feeling like she’s back in her rebellious phase in boarding school, when dread sets in. Dread in the form of one of Lex’s old classmates - a particularly harmless man if you ignored his tendency to get handsy and the overall stench of scotch that always tailed after him.

“Ah Lena, finally brining your girlfriend from out of the shadows I see.” Lena stands with pride with Kara at her side but she can still see the suspicion in his eyes, the challenge, the dare.

“Can’t a girl want something to herself every once in a while?”

“I can certainly see why you’d hide her away.” He takes his time looking over Kara’s body. His gaze makes even Lena cringe as it trails from head to toe and back again. She feels Kara tense beside her in the silence that unfolds as his eyes fixate, and shift, and fixate again. Lena slips her hand into Kara’s, intertwines their fingers in a way she hopes bring comfort. She thinks she just might have actually pulled it off when Kara squeezes back in reassurance. “She’s been getting looks all evening.”

“It’s a lovely dress,” Lena comments offhandedly, shifting her own body until she’s slightly in front of Kara, until his eyes fall on her own body and slap up to her eyes at the change.

“And an even lovelier woman.”

“Are you trying to hit on my girlfriend? In front of me?” She feels a swell of jealousy at his smirk, as she remembers the way girls used to flock to it, _still_ flock to it. She almost finds herself taking a step forward to square up before she realises how ridiculous she’s being, how this really isn’t the time or place to be starting fights for a lady’s honour. She does find herself the one tensing up this time however, her teeth aching with the intensity of the clench of her jaw.

Kara runs her free hand soothingly down her arm, presses her body into Lena’s to ground her. It makes her relax immediately but it’s the way Kara whispers her name that makes her realise she’s about to take this way too far over an offhanded comment and a lecherous gaze.

“Just paying my compliments.” Lena _could_ still punch him. It wouldn’t be the best decision but it also wouldn’t be the worst - it would be a lot tamer than some of the other ideas rushing through her brain. On the other hand, a hostile takeover of his father’s company could be a great idea (lucrative and highly amusing on a personal level).

“Like you paid the government to look the other way about your sketchy business deals in China?” Kara pipes up and Lena is loathed to admit she genuinely chokes on air because she truly did not expect that. Certainly not the thinly veiled threat. Even less so the sugar sweet smile that she delivers it with. Her questions all evening had been pressing but light, always light, always like she was skimming around the big question waiting for them to disclose it themselves, but this, this was nothing akin to light.

It was also hot.

 _Really hot_.

“I should be going,” he says stiffly, though his words are murmured through an impressed smirk.

“Shame,” Kara says with a polite smile and honestly Lena almost believes it. If she heard it as an outsider she most definitely would have believed it, would have fallen trap to the soft tone that sounded genuinely regretful, and the soft lips curved into a friendly grin. For the first time, Lena understands how Kara keeps her secret, how she tricks people, even how the two sides of herself come together to create the real her. Kara Zor-El.

“Nice catch, Luthor.” Lena replies to his parting wink with an eye roll before turning her attention to the girl beside her. Kara. Kara who just completely put that asshole in his place. Kara who helped her keep her cool.  Kara who was still smiling like nothing out of the ordinary had even taken place.

“Kara-“

“You looked like you were gonna fight him,” Kara says with a laugh in way of explanation, in way of answering all the question Lena hadn’t even thought to ask yet.

“Wouldn’t be the first time I’d punched one of Lex’s friends.” Probably also wouldn’t be the last since she always seemed to have a knack for getting herself into trouble, and an ongoing distaste for men in expensive suits who thought having money meant they were entitled to power (and whatever else their hearts, and other body parts, desired).

“That sounds like a story I want to hear.”

“Maybe another time,” Lena supplies cryptically.

“Like another time after I manage to fit a whole tray of quail eggs in my mouth?” Lena laughs at the excitement on Kara’s face, at the look in her eyes that says she’s going to accomplish the feat regardless of whether it ends in Lena opening up but it would be an added bonus.

“Sure. One _whole_ tray and I’ll spill all my secrets.” Kara doesn’t waste a second before trying and she does it. Of course she does it and of course she still looks stupidly cute with her cheeks puffed like a hamster and with glee in her eyes.

So Lena, true to her word, tells her about her glory days, about how she rarely used to come home for the holidays without new bruises on her knuckles and how Lex used to wink at her over the table as she got chewed out by Lillian. How being chewed out always felt better than being completely ignored. How Lionel would stay silent but after he appeared from his next business trip would sneak her a present that she knew meant he was proud of her for standing her ground.

She told her that punching some kid was how she got her first kiss, how it was only on the cheek but was enough for her to have a crisis moment of _crap, I like girls_. And Kara just listens, and laughs, and proudly states that she definitely would have punched them too, especially the one who grabbed Lena’s ass. Lena doesn’t hesitate to keep spilling story after story and she finds it’s nice to be open, and to laugh, and to joke. It’s nice to see her past for the good in it and not just the terrible. It’s nice to be open with Kara. It’s nice to just _be_ with Kara.

It’s always nice to be with Kara.

* * *

 

“Gals pals?!” Is the first thing that Kara says when she appears in Lena’s office, once again wielding a magazine like a weapon. Lena should probably prepare for this kind of entrance more often. She probably should have already been waiting for one. Although in her defence, she doesn’t flinch at the sporadic appearance, and neither does Jess if the lack of her, out of breath, and apologising profusely at her door, is anything to go by (or perhaps she was simply tired of finding the two of them in what she presumed were intimate situations).

“Hello to you too, Kara.” Lena smirks as Kara begins to pace in front of her desk, huffing and mumbling and throwing her hands around like she’s trying to figure out where to begin with all the thoughts running through her head. Lena thinks about telling her to slow down, thinks about pushing the chair opposite her out and gesturing for Kara to sit. She doesn’t. Instead she leans back casually in her chair and allows herself the enjoyment of watching a little bit longer. She finds the crinkle on her brow charming, the attempt at anger endearing, and the slight, and evidently accidental, use of her super speed enchanting.

“Hi. Gal pals? Last week they called us secret lovers and now, after actually attempting to go with it, we’re gal pals? We are a couple!” She punctuates her last statement by dropping into the chair opposite Lena at her desk with a huff.

“A fake couple,” Lena points out needlessly.

“Still. This is woman on woman love, not two buddies hanging out.”

“But we are two buddies hanging out.” Lena stands and circles around her desk, leaning back on it as she takes the magazine from Kara’s tight grip. She doesn’t really know why she’s playing devil’s advocate; she herself had been quite annoyed at the headline. She hates the term. She hates the fact that there are a ridiculous number of pictures of them laughing, and whispering, and hugging, and even one of Kara pressing a kiss to her cheek on her doorstep, and yet they still adamantly avoid the word ‘girlfriend’.

She hates that they belittle it all. She hates that the headlines are helping to cultivate that little voice in the back of her mind that says she could never truly have Kara, that they are just friends, that there’s still a possibility that Kara doesn’t even like girls.

“ _I_ know that but they should know that we’re a couple, and that we like each other, and that we do... stuff.” Kara blushes at the pause, at the mundane word and there’s a moment that Lena can’t work out why. Her mind is blank and Kara is looking down at her hands like she’s just said something really weird, or dirty, or... _dirty_? It couldn’t be. Unless it was.

“Stuff?” She prompts, revelling in the way Kara nervously bumps her glasses up the bridge of her nose and shuffles awkwardly in her chair like she’s trying to buy time, or simply avoid having to say anything at all, like perhaps if she looks enough like a deer in the headlights Lena will just let it go or will fill in the blanks with her own assumptions instead. Lena simply waits.

“You know... the stuff.” She should have known Kara wouldn’t openly say it. But, on the brightside, she was now almost a hundred percent sure on what it was she wasn’t quite saying. Truthfully, Lena’s first though is to wonder if that means Kara had been thinking about it, thinking about her, _them_ , doing things or, well, _stuff._

“You mean we have sex.” She shouldn’t have phrased it like that. Why did she always end up phrasing it like that? It was like she couldn’t stop herself from saying things outright instead of aptly sugar coating them. Maybe she just enjoyed being the cause of Kara almost completely toppling out of her chair, or the flex of her arms as she managed to right herself successfully just before she fell.

“Yeah. You and me. S-sex.”

“I’m not sure they could handle the reality of that.” Lena’s not sure that she could handle the reality of that; the imaginings were already making her brain go on the fritz.

“It would be a really hot reality,” Kara whispers and Lena thinks the blush crawling up her neck screams _that was an accident_ or _please, please don’t let me have said that out loud_ but Lena certainly heard it, and sure she could pretend that she didn’t, but she did, she really did and, judging by the way the words are already running on repeat in her head, she probably can’t just ignore them (she _definitely_ cannot just ignore them when she could have so much fun teasing Kara instead).

“Would it so, Miss Danvers?”

“Yeah because you’re so...” Kara trails off, gesturing towards Lena as though it easily filled in all the blanks, as though Lena would understand exactly what she meant, before she picks back up again with “so it would presumably be...” So maybe not as straight as she thought. Kara’s eyes linger on Lena’s body before snapping down to her own hands. Definitely not as straight as she thought.

“Well I’m sure you wouldn’t disappoint.” Lena’s words seem to bolster Kara immediately because she suddenly doesn’t hesitate to catch her gaze, almost seems to bask in the challenge hidden in their depths. Then she leans forward in her chair, both succeeding in putting her further into Lena’s space and making Lena herself sit on edge waiting for her words.

“Hypothetically speaking, it would be out of this world.” The laughter is as instantaneous as it is inevitable and Lena can’t even find it in herself to apologise because it’s just so Kara to try and be alluring and accidentally pull an alien pun out of the bag. “I didn’t mean it like that.” She blushes and Lena chuckles one last time before taking pity on her.

“No, I’m sure your _special skills_ would make for an unforgettable experience," Lena husks, confidence and daring seeping into every word. The words are meant to disarm, to put her at an advantage. The words are meant to produce her favourite Kara Danvers stammer, the one that makes Lena think this whole this isn't one sided, that this game of teasing and hinting could eventually amount to something.

They don't disarm or, at least, they don't disarm Kara, who stands up brazenly and then, even more boldly, hikes Lena onto the desk. She falters slightly as she comes to rest her hand on Lena’s leg, more knee than thigh. But only for a second. Two erratic beats of Lena's heart pound harshly in her chest before Kara seems to make up her mind from watching Lena's gaze desperately shift around her body, not quite sure what to take in first.

_Eyes... Lips... Hands... Hips..._

_Eyes. Lips. Hands. Hips._

_Eyes, li-_

“Oh you have no idea,” Kara husks, shifting slightly closer and _shit_ , this is not how Lena saw this conversation going, not how she saw her day going. Not that she was about to start filing complaints to fake relationship HR about it.

She’s too busy wondering if Kara will actually do it, wondering if she’ll actually kiss her, to hear the timid knocks on her office door. Thankfully she still has enough sense to notice that Jess is awkwardly standing in the doorway announcing that Lena’s next appointment is waiting. Lena smiles kindly but dismissively until Jess fumbles back through the doorway before taking her time slipping back onto her own two feet and brushing away invisible lint. When she turns back to Kara she finds her back in her own space, playing nervously with the strap of her bag.

“Dinner tonight? I can pick you up at seven?”

“Sounds good.”

“Almost as good as our theoretical dalliances?” Lena quips because she wants Kara to smile, to laugh, to look bright and carefree instead of like she’s waiting for her verdict at trial, because she could really do with her only true friendship in this city not being completely and totally awkward.

“Oh my gosh, Lena!” And there it was - the bright smile, the bubbly laughter, the ease – and Lena finds herself wanting to extend it, to expand on it.

“Is what you’d be saying if-“

“Stop it!” Kara calls out amongst laughter, her face more blush than anything else. Lena can’t stop grinning as she raises her hands in surrender. In all honesty, she’s already thinking of ways to mock Kara about it later, ways to slip jokes in under the radar and have Kara blushing as everyone else looks on confused. It’ll be fun. Amazingly fun. But for now she should probably focus on the company she’s supposed to be running.

“I’ll be good, promise.” She draws a cross over her heart with an attempted wink and Kara grins grandly as she makes her way to the door, slower than usual, like she’s trying to preserve the moment, even if only for a few seconds longer. Lena can relate. She’d rather spend the rest of her day joking with Kara then dealing with man after man who belittled her work, or thought they were entitled to something more than a steady pay check - like a good long look at her ass. But the real world came first and she knew if anyone were to understand that, it would be Kara.

“See you later, Lena.”

“Bye, Kara.”

“Oh, almost forgot,” Kara says abruptly, swirling away from the door and back towards Lena as she sweeps her up into her arms without preamble.

“No one’s around,” Lena says but hugs back anyway. She thinks she should have gotten used to Kara’s hugs by now - they had started before the ruse, but they were few and far between. Now Kara hugs her all the time, probably because she realised Lena relaxes into them now instead of tensing and attempting tirelessly to fall into the comfort offered to no avail.

Hugging Kara now though, Lena can’t imagine a time when she wouldn’t completely immerse herself in the arms wrapped around her - tight but gentle, like they want to squeeze with everything they have but know that they can’t. Arms that make her feel safe, and wanted, and warm. Arms that pull her closer and closer until there’s no space left between them.

Arms attached to a body that smells like processed sugar, and a little like spring, and a lot like something distinctly Kara - which honestly was probably just more processed sugar, or week old takeout  that would leave anyone other than a Kryptonian hugging the toilet bowl like an old friend, but was one of Kara’s favourite meals.

“I know. I just wanted to.” Kara grips tighter for a moment and Lena holds back the hiss of pain as she lets her have this moment, lets her push it just a little further like she’s just another normal girl hugging her friend. Kara’s grip loosens quickly as she comes back to the real world. She steps away after pressing her lips to Lena’s cheek briefly. “Okay, now I’ll see you later.”

“See you later,” Lena says wistfully, distractedly, happily, with a smile that she keeps all through her next meeting. Thankfully it seems to intimidate the man because she doesn’t think she could stop it even if she actively tried to.

* * *

 

Everything was going well. The press were having their fun - for once not at Lena’s expense. Kara had seemed to enjoy being able to go to a bar without having to worry about being hit on and not knowing quite how to politely say no. And Lena... Lena was enjoying the good publicity, and the boom in business, but she mostly just liked spending time with Kara (a fact that she knew would start working to her detriment at some point).

But she was suspicious.

Incredibly suspicious.

Kara had made her dinner, and apparently flown to Paris to buy her favourite chocolates, and hadn’t stopped incessantly bouncing her leg up and down all evening, and Lena knows something is up. It’s obvious that something is up and truly she’s getting more than a little impatient waiting for Kara to gather up the guts to reveal what it is. It’s after Kara’s eighth grand sigh that Lena realises maybe she isn’t the only one waiting for someone to speak up.

“What is it, Kara?” She asks once they’ve relocated to the couch and Kara twists her body instantly to the source of the sound, succeeding in making it entirely too obvious that she’d been waiting all evening for this exact moment. Lena’s just impressed she made it over an hour.

“You have to meet my sister,” Kara blurts, looking both grateful that Lena gave her an opening and entirely panicked about the reality of having to actually say what was on her mind. Except, Lena distinctly remembers meeting Alex Danvers - the first time with a gun in her hand, and the second with an odd swell of jealously before Lena realised they were sisters and not, in fact, dating. It had actually been a real turning point for her in terms of figuring out what the elevated heart rate and odd fluttering in her stomach when she was around Kara actually meant.

“I do believe I’ve met her before.” It wasn’t the greatest experience, but that was mostly due to awkwardness and the consistent suspicion Alex looked at her with. She looked a little too knowing and Lena had escaped as quickly as she could after asking Kara to get into contact with Supergirl, or herself. Although, even considering all of that, Kara meeting her own family had definitely gone worse (see: her mother actually trying to kill Kara, even if she only knew her as Supergirl).

“Yeah but you need to _meet her_ , meet her. As in, meet her as my girlfriend.” Right. Of course. That made sense. Total sense. Kara did say they needed to lie to everyone and honestly she should have expected this at some point. She just didn’t expect this point to be that point.

“Oh.”

“Yeah, sorry, but she didn’t believe me and then I said _I’ll prove it_ and she was all like _oh yeah, how?_ And I definitely took the bait so now you have to meet her, and also the rest of my friends because we’re going to the bar that we always go to so they’ll definitely be there.” Lena forgets the reality of the situation for a moment as she watches Kara adorably attempt to mimic her sister and finds she actually doesn’t do too bad of a job. Then it all hits her again. The sister. The friends. The innumerable shovel talks and awkward moments. The general experience.

“So I’m meeting your family and friends. As your girlfriend. This is...” A big thing? Ridiculous? The kind of thing that Lena hadn’t quite accounted for when she suggested the whole fake dating thing? Making Mike of the Interns, or whatever his real name was, back off sounded great but sitting next to James Olsen and trying to act normal seemed less great. A lot less great.

“Is it too much? It’s too much. I mean, we’re not even really dating and I’m kind of throwing you under the bus.” Lena softens at the sight of Kara’s panic and guilt. She put herself in this situation, she put Kara in this situation, and she was going to see the both of them through to the other end, having gotten exactly what they wanted out of it (minus a few baseless hopes of actual feelings).

“If anyone got thrown under the proverbial bus, it was you. The least I can do is meet the people in your life, maybe keep up my end of the bargain and keep the strays away from you.”

“They’re not strays, they’re just...”

“Your harem of jilted lovers?” Lena offers, laughs happily as Kara scoffs immediately, smacking her arm in retaliation and recompense.

“It’s not a harem, Lena.” Arguably harem adjacent in Lena’s book. Not that she could blame the men in Kara’s life for falling for her, nor could she really blame them for accepting their fate of friendship and gladly choosing to remain in Kara’s life even if they couldn’t have anything more. She was enigmatic, and a little odd, and had so much faith in a world that most people would agree didn’t deserve it. It wasn’t exactly hard to get caught in her web but it did seem rather difficult to get back out.

“A club?” Lena supplies in jest.

“Stop it.” Kara shoves her, laughing loudly until she realises she’s managed to completely push Lena onto the floor. Lena, on her part, simply laughs harder as she lies upon the ground and decides she won’t be getting back up anytime soon. Her laughter dies down to a grin when Kara drops down to lie beside her, though she doesn’t turn to look at her, simply continues to stare at the ceiling, noting all the marks that were probably caused by something ridiculous - like Kara flipping a pancake too hard, or a food fight gone wrong.

“But they’ll be there?” Lena pipes up after the silence lingers a little too long.

“Yeah.”

“Then so will I,” she promises. This deal was a two way street and Lena doesn’t think the one front page she managed to deliver Kara really equated to all the boring events she’d been dragged to and the constant flow of paparazzi lingering outside her apartment (which was thankfully beginning to die down after a few weeks of them being open about their ‘relationship’).

“Awesome. I’ll pick you up at your apartment tomorrow at seven; it’s on the way if you don’t mind walking?”

“Sounds perfect.” They don’t talk about it for the rest of the night. They don’t talk about it the next day either until Lena receives a text an hour before she’s supposed to leave making sure she’s still happy to go. Her reply is definitely too exuberant but Kara accepts it anyway, arrives on her doorstep five minutes early with fidgeting feet and an almost excited smile.

Walking gives her enough time to calm her nerves. Correction. Walking with Kara’s hand clenched tightly in her own gives her enough time to calm her nerves. It doesn’t manage to stop the panic from rising again immediately the moment they step foot in the bar, however.

Frankly, she expected more of a fanfare or, at least, your friendly neighbourhood alien mob telling the local Luthor to get the hell out. She doesn’t get that. In fact, no one flinches when she steps into the downtrodden watering hole, no one turns to look, no one turns to judge, no one even seems to realise someone else had invaded their space. No one except four people whose eyes are trained on her before the door has even fully closed.

She debates running. She hates running. She’s terrible at running. But you can sure as hell bet that she has a full scale debate about the merits of running away as they all stare her down. Unfortunately, Kara seems prepared for that because she squeezes Lena’s hand soothingly until she deflates slightly and then dares to take a risk forward.

Lena follows (of course she follows) and thanks her lucky stars that J’onn isn’t sitting amongst the _super friends_ as Kara had dubbed them on the walk over - she’s not so sure she could handle a surrogate father figure right now, especially not a telepathic one.

The reception she receives isn’t the worst. Lena might even go as far as to say it’s quite warm - from Winn and Maggie at least. Winn slips easily into talking about her new designs and it’s simple to talk to him about engineering, and technology, and that time she hacked the pentagon just because Lex said she wouldn’t be able to and she’s always been stubborn if nothing else. Maggie is quiet amongst the group but she sends reassuring smiles her way every once in a while and Lena thinks she probably understands what it’s like to be the outsider amongst these people, understands that Lena wants to make a good impression, doesn’t want Kara to think she isn’t worth the effort.

Then there’s Alex and James, and the glares. They become less harsh after Kara sends a particularly angry one of her own across the table. After that they look more suspicious than anything else. Like they’re wondering what Lena really wants from Kara, like they’re preparing themselves to pick up the pieces of Kara when Lena inevitably lets her down, like they’re still judging her by her name and not her merits. She expected it. She even understood it - Jimmy was Superman’s best boy and Alex was Kara’s self assigned protector. She got it. It just hurt a little to experience it in person.

“So, Lena, what are you intentions with Kara?” Alex says conversationally but Lena can hear the edge to the tone, although truthfully it sounds more mocking than mistrustful. It certainly makes Kara groan and Winn sits up in his seat like he’d been waiting for this all day. Even James cracks a smile at the words before shooting an almost sympathetic glance Lena’s way.

“I-I-“ She should have been prepared to answer questions like this. She should have prepared an actual answer for this exact question. Instead she’s just floundering for an answer at all. Should she make a joke? Should she be overly sentimental? Should she be honest, or as honest as one can be when the reality of the relationship isn’t so honest? She’s never been asked that question before. She’s never gotten this far in a relationship before - real or fake - and she has no idea what to say.

“Alex, leave the girl be. You’ve already glared holes into her in the name of sisterhood, I think you can leave the hard hitting questions until she’s at least done a couple of shots.” She could seriously hug Maggie Sawyer right now.

“Have you forgotten the shovel talk Kara gave you?”

“Have I forgotten little Danvers threatening to throw me into space whilst smiling? No. That was creepy, especially since it could actually be done.” Maggie freezes the moment the words are out of her mouth and Lena almost outright laughs as the rest of them freeze in turn. Then eyes start flickering to one another over the table and Lena knows they’re all trying to have a wordless conversation, trying to fix this without alerting to Lena that anything was wrong in the first place.

She almost lets them attempt it.

_Almost._

“You do know that mass panic is considered incredibly suspicious? Thankfully for you I already had the Supergirl thing figured out.”

“The glasses?” Maggie guesses and Lena smiles softly at Kara when she starts mumbling indignantly about how _it’s a good disguise,_ and that it _worked for Clark,_ and that they _all needed to get off her back about the stupid glasses_. Lena takes Kara’s hand gently before she even debates answering, doesn’t dare draw her eyes away from Kara when she speaks again.

“The unflinching belief in me actually. Though the glasses and ponytail aren’t great either, especially since I’ve seen her with neither.” She smirks as she utters the final part of the sentence. It’s meant to rattle, disarm, make them focus on something other than the first part of the sentence, the part that was mostly for Kara. It also gives her enough to time to recover her facade after the stuttering.

“Where?”

“My bedroom,” Lena admits with a grin. Alex needn’t know that she saw it first in the doorway of her apartment, or that the only reason Kara had neither in her bedroom was because they were going to sleep. She has to at least get a little bit of revenge for the ten minute glare session.

“What?!” Alex leans slightly across the table, her eyes flicking erratically between Kara and Lena like she can’t quite decide who she wants to answer the question or if she even wants the question answered at all. In the end, no one can really blame Lena for pushing it further, especially since she wasn’t the only one who seemed to be enjoying the turn of events.

“Don’t worry, Agent Danvers, she had clothes on. Well, there were clothes.” Technically she wasn’t lying because there were clothes, they just so happened to be Lena’s pyjamas and not Kara’s.

“What?!”

“Relax, Alex. She’s teasing you,” Kara butts in.

“So she’s never seen you with anything less than five layers on?” Alex asks and Lena immediately tenses in a way she hopes no one catches onto, but finds the smirk on Maggie’s face speaks far louder than words. At least Alex doesn’t seem to notice the change in her demeanour. At least Kara can just lie and simply say Lena hasn’t... or maybe she can’t because Lena knows she’s been silent for too long for anything but the truth to be coming out of her mouth.

“Well I mean there was sort of a... _thing_ and she saw my...” Kara gesticulates wildly to her chest as she blushes blindingly and Lena thinks both the blush, and the inability to just lie to save a little bit of awkwardness, are adorable. Except then she starts thinking about _that day_ , and exactly what it was that she saw, and she can’t help a blush from spreading across her own cheeks. It had taken her a good few hours to not actively think about what she’d seen. A couple of weeks later and she was still passively thinking about it, about the ease in which Kara had slipped her dress from her shoulders.

“Boobs?” Winn squeaks out and Lena can’t help the chuckle that slips out of her mouth. She doesn’t waver as much as Winn does at the glare Alex directs at the two of them - admittedly it’s slightly intimidating but considering she’s been pushed from a literal skyscraper, she was feeling a little brazen (plus she had the added safety net of Kara, who was still holding Lena’s hand like she had forgotten it was there, like the extra weight felt natural).

“Yes. Those. But we’re dating and it was only fair because I saw hers and you know, quid pro quo, you show me yours and I’ll show you mine, an eye for an eye, but like, a bo-“

“I think they get it, love,” Lena cuts in. She doesn’t mean for the term of endearment to slip but it has the desired effect of making Kara stop and take a breath for a second, which is great because she has a hunch that the ‘tit for tit’ slip up wouldn’t be as cute to Alex as it was to her.

“Great because I was running out.”

“You were doing great - the writer in you was really shining through.”

“Thanks.” Crimson gently blooms across Kara’s cheeks and Lena almost forgets where they are, almost forgets that Kara just admitted to her sister that Lena saw her boobs, almost forgets that this isn’t real, that they aren’t really dating, aren’t really in love.

“How long?” Alex asks and Kara snaps out of their temporary bubble to answer.

“Since she was my b-“

“No, Kara. How long has she known you're Supergirl?”

“I knew the moment we met,” Lena confesses. The first time they met she was beside Clark Kent. The second time Kara slipped up and told Lena that she _flew_ there on a bus. She had tried to talk herself out of it time and again. She had spent countless hours being so sure of Kara’s true identity and then immediately trying to reason herself out of it by telling herself she was being ridiculous, that she was imagining things, that it would be so much easier if Kara was just Kara. But then Kara continued slipping up and Lena just decided to give into the truth.

“What? You only told me two weeks ago.”

“I only told you I knew after a slipup. I wanted you to be able to tell me yourself. It’s your secret. No one should go around dictating when you divulge it.”

“But you lied,” Kara argues.

“You never asked,” Lena retorts simply. If anything it was an omission. An omission that was for the greater good. The greater good that was what Kara fought for everyday besides the last cookie, or muffin, or potsticker, or really any last piece of food. In the end, Lena never did it to spite her, just like Kara never kept the secret to spite Lena, but the glare Kara was attempting told her she wasn’t going to get off as easily as she had let Kara.

“So you just keep secrets and then claim no one ever asked so omitting the truth isn’t an issue?” So Kara was definitely a little bit angry, and Alex was definitely enjoying this a lot more than being teased (Lena not so much).

“I don’t have any secrets from you, Kara. Go ahead, ask me anything you want.” This was going to be a mistake. Kara grins deviously at her. Definitely a mistake.

“In front of everyone?” Kara asks excitedly.

“If that’s what it takes.” Lena shouldn’t have done this to herself. She was definitely going to regret this, and it was probably going to be something incredibly embarrassing because after the past few weeks there were honestly few things that Kara didn’t know about her. Except...

“What’s your middle name?” _That_.

“I really set myself up for that. You don’t want to try something harder, something Mr Schott couldn’t find in my records in two seconds?” Something that incriminated Lena in a crime so that she could hide in prison for a little while until Kara cleared her name and, in all the daze, forgot she ever asked Lena to answer this question, in front of people who would have no qualms teasing her about her ridiculous middle name?

“The more you avoid it, the more I want to know.” Lena sighs, resigning herself to her fate, steeling herself for the laughter that was bound to come.

“Lutessa.”

“That is...” Stupid. Ridiculous. Pretentious. A name that sounded like they wanted to keep the whole ‘L’ thing going but just got really lazy about it. “Adorable.” Not what Lena was expecting. On the other hand, she was definitely expecting the sniggers it triggered around the rest of the table.

“I’m going to get a round. Let you all mock my name in private.” Maybe if she plied them with enough alcohol they would forget, or at least like her enough to not bring it up at any chance they got. Although Kara didn’t hate it, and the way she muttered _Alexandra_ as Lena stood up had made Alex stop laughing for enough time that Lena thought maybe she could live it down.

“I’ll help.” Kara jumps up quickly and Lena wants to be upset that her plan to secretly down some shots has been foiled, but then she finds Kara’s arm wrapped around her waist, guiding her to the bar and she’s too busy enjoying it to think about the sudden lack of alcohol.

“Kara, hey!” Boyish good looks. A smile that was not as charming as it was cocky, self assured. Mike. He looked a little different without the glasses and the bowtie and the general sense of confusion, but there was still an air of something Lena didn’t enjoy. Namely the way his eyes were firmly locked on Kara, even as someone down the bar tried to get his attention.

“Oh Mon-El, meet Lena.” It’s possible that Lena has a little too much fun sliding a mischievous smile across her face as she slips her arm around Kara (and by possible, she means definitely does). The fun is drained a little at the lack of recognition of both her and what the movement is meant to signify. He stands clueless and Lena slips her hand into the pocket of Kara’s jeans even though he can’t see it. It’s not a conscious move. Not a decisive action. But it happens and Kara jolts against her hand before turning to her with raised brows and her usual unintelligible stammering when Lena takes the chance to test the waters and flirt with her.

Lena doesn’t move her hand.

Kara decides not to question it.

“Mon...El? Any relation?” She knows that there isn’t, knows that he’s been pursuing Kara since basically the moment he woke up (after the whole attack thing) but the look on his face is worth the comment - as is the snort that comes abruptly from Kara.

“I sure hope not.” She should probably just order drinks. She should order drinks for the table and walk away from this, but honestly she’s been waiting for this moment since Kara agreed to be her fake girlfriend and let Lena ward off any possible suitors.

There was a part of her that was a little excited, a part of her that thrived on confrontation. There was also a part of her that had listened to Kara moan about Mon-El time and again, a part of her that wondered why people kept giving him chances just to watch him throw them away, or only attempt to make the most of them so that he would look good in front of Kara.

(It’s those parts of her that make her stay.

Those parts of her that have her tugging Kara closer).

“And why would that be?”

“I wish to be her mate or ‘date her’ as they call it here.” Well he wasn’t pulling any punches, although he also didn’t seem to have noticed the close proximity between her and Kara.

“Wow that was open.”

“Are you not supposed to be open on Earth?” He looks genuinely perplexed, like he genuinely believes the only issue here is his openness and Lena is struck. From what Lena had gathered from Kara’s rants and ramblings, Daxam was somewhat built on partying and sex, and yet he hadn’t seemed to click that Lena’s hand had been on Kara’s ass for a minute too long for it to be considered friendly - no matter where in the universe you came from.

“Not to the face of the girlfriend of the person you want to mate.” There is was. Loud and clear. No room for misconceptions. No space for misunderstandings. No time for him to extend his flirting with Kara beyond the looks he was trying to send her across the bar that Kara was blatantly ignoring in favour of looking at the food menu.

“Girlfriend? No. Winn said Kara was single,” he says, finally turning his full attention to Lena.

“Not anymore.” Lena will admit to the little bit of delight she gets out of watching him defensively cross his arms, watching the confusion and indignation spread across his face.

“I don’t believe you. Kara would have told me.”

“Before her sister?” She argues because she’s heard story after story about the great Alex Danvers. A person who Kara idolises above all else. A person that she places on an almost unattainable pedestal. A person who Kara always confides in, who she goes to when she’s sad, whose opinion matters to Kara the most. There was absolutely no way Kara would ever decide to tell Mon-El, or anyone really, about their ‘relationship’ before she told Alex because it would break the sister code that Kara practically treated like law.

“I-“

“We just wanted some time to figure it out for ourselves,” Kara cuts in and Lena is half glad that she stops it from becoming an all out argument, and half annoyed that she stops it from becoming an all out argument because she’s pretty sure she would have won and she’s also pretty sure she would have revelled in the disappointment and anger on his face.

“It doesn’t make sense. I- Kara- we-“ He stumbles and Lena shifts her arm until it rests more obviously on Kara’s shoulder, tugging her the last inch closer.

“The only we is Kara and I.” That feels good to say. It feels _great_ to say. It also feels great to catch sight of the wistful smile on Kara’s face, the one that makes Lena think Kara quite likes hearing it too.

“Prove it,” he taunts and Lena finally understands what Kara meant about being baited by Alex because she’s definitely falling into this. Head first. Straight into the ocean and suddenly she’s forgotten to swim. So she decides to do something stupid, and reckless, and truthfully she’s not entirely sure what she thinks she’s proving but she kisses her.

Her being Kara and the kiss being hard.

When she looks back on it this will be the ‘ _oh’_ moment. It _is_ the ‘oh’ moment. The moment she realises that she doesn’t just find Kara attractive and it isn’t just a crush. It’s more. It’s so much more. This is the ‘oh’ moment - also rightfully called the ‘holy shit’ moment - in which Lena comes to the realisation that she’s in love with Kara.

The ‘oh’ moment begins with the press of soft lips against her own. Softs lips that press with timid confusion for a split second (a split second that is long enough for Lena to have an inner panic) before they fall mercy to Lena’s own, before they become pliable, malleable, something for Lena to shape and reshape until her curiosity is sated.

It continues with a Kara’s subtle whimper as Lena slips her fingers into golden locks, lets her palms trace unmarred skin and the gentle slope of her jaw. A jaw that Lena wants to press her lips to, wants to map out wholly with her hands and her mouth just in case she never gets the chance again. She doesn’t. Instead she pushes harder, runs her tongue along Kara’s bottom lip because she’s already sprung this on her, she doesn’t need to push it any further without consent.

It crashes into her when Kara accepts. It smashes into her with unstoppable force as her tongue touches Kara’s, as Kara grips Lena’s hips like she needs to ground herself, but Lena’s no immovable object. In fact, she can feel the mountains moving inside her when Kara pulls away for a second to simply switch angles, brushing her nose against Lena’s as she repositions herself. She can feel the tides shift in her chest as Kara’s hands slide to the small of her back, pull her closer, hold her tighter.

The ‘oh’ moment concludes when she remembers they’re in a public place and finally finds it in herself to pull away. It concludes with blue eyes that flutter open and catch her own with a mix of confusion and awe that Lena understands wholeheartedly. It concludes with Lena clearing her throat and extracting herself with one last passing brush of her thumb along Kara’s lips to rid her of stray lipstick. It concludes with an ‘ _is that enough proof’_ look to Mon-El and a more conscious look thrown to the table they left behind - the one with four faces ranging from amused to impressed to, what she thinks is, begrudging satisfaction gained from the priceless look on Mon-El’s face.

Lena calmly orders her drink then. She waits patiently as Kara tags on the orders for the rest of the table. She doesn’t say a word as she hands over far too much money and grips the glasses in her hands so hard that she’s almost afraid she’ll break them. She silently accepts the high five that Maggie gives her. Wordlessly she returns the smile that James sends her way in apology and timid acceptance.

She doesn’t speak for a while. She doesn’t think she can. Or she could. She could speak, she could talk at length, she just knows that any and all words that come out are going to be about the fruity taste of Kara’s lip balm, or the sugary taste on her tongue and the way it still tingles in her mouth. Or the burning on her skin. The fire that spread from Kara’s palms and was running along her body like her skin was made of gasoline.

Maybe just an inevitable lament for her feelings because this can’t end well. Realising she’s in love with Kara can’t end well. Except, after five minutes of pretending to listen and nodding her head when she thinks it’s appropriate she feels Kara’s hand slip into her own and it’s comforting enough to quell the voice in her head, reassuring enough that she manages to rejoin the world.

It’s not enough to stop the thoughts late at night though.

The ones that chant real or fake.

Real or fake?

_Real or fake?!_

* * *

 

Like all sensible human beings, Lena shoves her feelings to the back of her mind, hides them behind work schedules, and business meetings, and that one song Kara sang in the car last week that she just couldn’t get out of her head. It’s good. It’s unhealthy but it’s good.

(Good enough).

Kara doesn’t seem to notice that things have changed, doesn’t seem to notice that Lena’s whole life view had changed, that her heart had uprooted itself, determined to find its way into Kara’s hand. And Lena... Lena notices the change, or rather, suddenly takes note of the way she acts around Kara that she had been adamantly avoiding analysing until now. Until the _oh_ (which was what she was calling the kiss in her head so that she didn’t have to call it a kiss, because calling it a kiss made it feel more real, and she was trying to keep her cool).

On the upside, for once Lena doesn’t employ her usual avoidance technique; instead she throws herself into dragging Kara to public appearances. Truthfully it’s probably the most she’s ever been openly in the public eye, including the ‘generous Luthor’s adopt young orphan’ era. She starts attending ridiculous things, accepting invites that she declines year after year but is suddenly determined to go to, and she knows she’s using them as excuses to spend time with Kara, she knows she’s trying to be with her as much as possible before Kara calls this whole thing off, before Kara realises that she doesn’t get as much from this as Lena does.

On the downside, her over eagerness to spend time with Kara ends with her agreeing to put herself in an incredibly uncomfortable situation just to get Kara to smile. It begins at movie night with a simple invite. A casual invite to a casual event with absolutely no pressure. That’s not how it ends.

“So I have this press thing at the animal shelter if you want to come? I believe it’s supposed to make me more likeable, which I personally think seems rather ridiculous but I could give you the exclusive on my favourite breed of dog.”

“You and puppies? I can think of nothing I’d like more.” It’s an odd compliment and one she never imagined receiving but it makes her smile nonetheless. Most things that Kara says make her smile though, because she’s cute, and sweet, and Lena is apparently incredibly weak when it comes to dorky girls in button ups and knit sweaters named Kara.

“What if the puppies had pizzas strapped to their backs?” Lena watches the thought wash over Kara, watches the smile spread slowly but surely across her face.

“Okay, one thing I’d like more. This is also great timing because I maybe also need a favour.” Kara looks genuinely nervous to ask. At first she remains silent, twiddling her thumbs, refusing to look up from their movement. Then she opens her mouth to speak before attempting to push up glasses that she quickly realises aren’t on her face now that she didn’t need to hide who she was. Lena gets nervous the longer they sit there - mostly because it gives her time to think up worst case scenarios and terrible ‘what ifs’ that could only end in disaster.

“Anything,” Lena prompts, breaking Kara’s hands apart and slipping her own to join with Kara’s in what she hopes is a comforting gesture. She knows it works when things are the other way around, especially when paired with the words she’s coming to think of as theirs.

“You might regret saying that when you realise I’m asking you to have dinner with Eliza.” Of all the things she was expecting, that was not one of them. Her mind had gone to worse places and took a detour in fantasy land before coming back to think of some more worse places but she never expected to be asked this. Probably because she’s never been asked this before. Ever.

“Your mother?” She asks and Kara nods slowly. The woman who raised Kara. The woman who took in an orphaned child and gave her a home on earth. And Lena. The woman who was fantastic in business meeting with business associates but ultimately failed when it came to legitimate human interaction. And to top it all off she’d have to lie to the woman’s face.

“I know this is asking a lot but apparently I talk about you too much and she asked Alex about it and she obviously spilled that we’re dating, and Eliza always thinks I spend too much time being Supergirl and not really living my life and she was really happy for me, and then we were hugging and she said she should meet you and I was living in the moment and said we’d go for dinner, so now we’re supposed to go for dinner on Saturday.”

“Saturday. Dinner. Eliza. Your mother.” Those were the facts, though that was not really the sentence she meant to incorporate them in. She meant to perhaps pose a question, or reassure Kara that the way Lena’s entire body had tensed up was to be expected. It was her first line of defence when she started to panic. It was usually quickly followed by Lena scrambling for any excuse to get the hell out of Dodge (which she strangely didn’t feel the urge to do with Kara watching her with baited breath and hopeful eyes).

“Yep. I could cancel? I should cancel.” Kara shifts like she’s going to grab her phone and tell Eliza right that second that their plans are cancelled. Honestly Lena thinks she would have if she hadn’t tugged Kara back down with an amused smile and a slow exhale.

“No, that won’t be necessary. I can eat dinner with Eliza. I _will_ eat dinner with Eliza.”

“Really?”

“Full disclosure I’ve never met someone’s parents. I mean I’ve met parents, but I’ve never met a significant others parents.” She’d never really gotten that far in a relationship. There was also the fact that, whilst she was the CEO of a major corporation and had delightful manners, she was taught those manners and was given that company from a family people didn’t trust all that much.

“I’ve never brought anyone home before.” Now that was more of a shock.

“Never?” Lena can’t help but double check and finds herself shocked when Kara shakes her head. She was sure a bumbling teenage Kara would have nervously brought a boy home and introduced him to her parents, or that a still bumbling adult Kara would have been struck for choice for whom to bring home for dinner.

Except that if she let herself really think about it, she can’t see those things. What she sees is a nervous teenage Kara trying to fit in with people she didn’t fully understand yet, all the while struggling to hide her powers, and stifle her intellect to something fitting for a regular sixteen year old girl from Earth instead of an alien bred for science. What she sees is an adult Kara understanding the severity of her strength and constantly giving in to the lingering knowledge that she could hurt someone she loves at any moment if she lost control.

And Lena understands to a degree.

What she can’t quite comprehend is why her?

“Are you sure you want your first time to be with me?” Another check for the awkward sexual innuendo column and, at the risk of making things worse, all she can think is – shouldn’t it be special? Shouldn’t the first person Kara brings home mean something to her? Mean _everything_ to her? Be the kind of person that Kara sees herself building a life with and not just someone she’s building a series of more and more complicated lies with?

“I want it to be you.” Kara’s tone leaves no room for argument. Her eyes leave no room for questioning. The squeeze of her hand makes Lena think that she knows exactly what Lena is thinking, knows all the questions she’s allowing to run rampant through her mind, but that Kara also knows that this really is what she wants.

“Okay, so we can just work it out as we go. Together.”

“Together.” It begins with a simple invite and ends with Lena driving to the home of her fake girlfriend’s mother and the phrase _I should not have done this_ running through her brain on repeat.

Neither of them moves when they get there. After Lena pulls onto the drive and parks the car, they both just silently stare at the house, taking the time to pump themselves up. Lena doesn’t dare turn to Kara. Not yet. She knows that this is fake. She knows she’s not really the girlfriend being introduced to a parent for the first time but she feels like she is. She feels like she is and she wants to make a good impression. She wants to be liked. She needs to be liked. She thinks maybe if Eliza approves then Kara will realise that this could actually be what she wants. In a real capacity.

“Are you sure about this because we can turn right back around. I’ll even drive.” That wouldn’t be happening, even if she did trust Kara to drive her car (which she sure as hell did not).

“Kara, darling, stop freaking out. Just yesterday you put out two fires and stopped an armed robbery and I managed to hack into Winn’s files - I think we can handle some food and friendly interrogation.” Lena’s not quite sure when she became the calm one or, at least, the one who was calm on the surface - she was definitely still freaking out. But she had handled Luthor family dinners and she was sure that meant she could power through this.

“It was you who hacked Winn?” She had meant to keep that secret to herself a little bit longer. Kara seemed to have a specific weakness for secrets when it came to Winn and she was rather enjoying Winn scrambling to figure out who managed to get in.

“He told me I couldn’t do it.” It was insulting. He deserved a little bit of panic.

“You know you actually hacked the DEO right? J’onn was freaking out about it all day.” She had thought about that. She had also decided that she was willing to deal with the repercussions and his mythical look of disappointment for the immediate self validation and enjoyment. If anything she was helping them out by showing them weak points in their security.

“I’m sure he’ll forgive me when he finds the specs he needs to replicate that fancy gun Alex loves so much. Obviously I added a couple of upgrades.”

“Winn’s gonna be so jealous you figured it out first,” Kara laughs and Lena smirks happily. She really hopes she’s around when Winn finds out. They’d been arguing over who could figure it out first for a week and she could see the panic he hid behind feigned self assuredness and sarcasm that she just might get to the answer first.

Evidently he hadn’t taken into account the fact that she was a child prodigy with a praise complex when he sent her a message that morning that she could suck it because he was moments away from cracking it (he also seemed to have forgotten that Alex also had her number and was definitely not above revealing that he’d blown his prototype up).

“That’ll teach him for underestimating me.”

“I’ll never underestimate you,” Kara says sincerely and Lena turns to catch the smile on Kara’s face. Lena feels her own smile soften at the sight. She feels her lungs finally allow themselves to take a calming breath. She feels calm, if only for a moment, calm enough to realise that she doesn’t have to act, or pretend, or lie to be convincing - she just needs to be the way she always is around Kara.

“Well then believe that I am going to convincingly charm Eliza.” As long as she steers any and all conversation away from the topic of her murderous family, especially the one that was incredibly invested in attempting to kill Kara at the current moment.

“It’s not you I’m worried about. What if I slip up and then I’m the daughter who lied about a relationship to get her mother off her back?” Lena reaches across the console and settles her hand gently on Kara’s knee, lets her thumb draw random patterns across the fabric as she speaks again.

“Then you’re the daughter who lied about having a relationship to get her mother off her back and we’ll get ice cream - I’ll even buy you a triple scoop cone.”

“With sprinkles?” Kara questions and Lena rolls her eyes fondly at the barely hidden excitement – she almost looks like she’s willing for it to go horribly just to earn her ice cream.

“With all the sprinkles,” Lena promises. Kara is still tense when Lena takes the initiative to get out of the car and walk round to open Kara’s door. Her hand is taken the second she extends it inside the vehicle and she offers a small smile when Kara climbs out. “Ready?” Lena double checks, tugging Kara towards the door when she receives a nod in return. She thinks she might have to promise pizza too when Kara reaches up to knock before dropping her hand loudly to her side.

“Maybe you should...” She gestures towards the door. “Last time I was this nervous I put my hand through it.” Lena chuckles as she knocks. She shouldn’t be shocked by the speed in which it opens - the woman on the other side had probably been waiting to open it since they pulled up in the car five minutes before.

The first thing Lena thinks when Eliza opens the door is that she can see the resemblance, that she can indisputably see Kara in her smile. It’s not in familiarly shaped lips, nor the same kind of crinkle by the eyes. It comes from the warmth it exudes, the kindness that comes off in waves, the way she pairs it with a look like she understands what it’s like to feel alone but she’s safe here. It makes her want to cry a little bit. Thankfully she doesn’t. Instead she thrusts her free hand a little too forcefully towards the woman in the doorway.

“It’s nice to meet you Dr. Danvers.”

“You too, Lena. And Eliza, please.” Lena manages a sincere smile when her hand is taken softly and another smile is offered her way.

“Eliza,” she repeats lowly whilst the woman in question wraps Kara up in a warm hug. The way Eliza hugs wholeheartedly reminds her of Kara too. The way she squeezes tighter before letting go like she can make the hug linger just that little bit longer even if her arms are no longer wrapped around the person. It’s comforting to think this is the person who guided Kara through her formative years. Reassuring to know that Kara found a home even when she lost everything.

“Would the two of you like to come in or would you like some time to panic on the doorstep?” Well there was no denying that she knew they had been here for far longer than they’d been at the door.

“I think Kara worried enough in the car,” Lena says, stepping inside. Usually Kara sang to every song that came on, she even valiantly attempted to sing along to songs she didn’t know - Lena never complained though because Kara wasn’t lying when she said she had golden pipes and watching her scramble to guess the lyrics was always hilarious (especially when she got them right and did an excited wiggle in her seat). But she had been quiet on the drove over. Eerily so.

“Says the one who almost broke her steering wheel without super strength.” Fair point, though not one she was openly going to spend time dwelling on.

“It smells lovely in here.” Lena changes the subject quickly and she knows it doesn’t go unnoticed by either of the Danvers women but they thankfully don’t question the abrupt change. Lena also thankfully hadn’t managed to break her steering wheel, although there was a definite new rattle to it every time she turned it and probably some fresh finger indents.

“Thank you, Lena. Usually Kara insists on cooking when we have dinner together but I thought it’d probably be best if I did it today.” That makes Lena stop and take note. Kara cooking. _Kara_ cooking? Kara who loved takeout more than most things in the world. Kara whose idea of gourmet was when she had the ‘genius’ idea to put potstickers on top of pizza which, given, wasn’t terrible but also didn’t give off the vibe that Kara knew how to cook.

“Kara cooking?” Lena hadn’t quite meant to say the question out loud but she does want answers so she faces Eliza’s chuckle and Kara’s attempted scowl head on with a cocked brow.

“Hey! I made you dinner at movie night the other day remember?” Like Lena could forget.

“It was burnt,” Lena deadpans. She’s sure there could have been a nice flavour to the chicken if it wasn’t completely black and on the edge of turning to a pile of ash on her plate. To be fair, the potatoes were more of a dark brown than an actual black and the salad wasn’t burnt, though Kara had gone a little overboard with the croutons (at least they were store bought).

“I was nervous about asking you to come here.”

“Likely story.”

“I’m proving it to you tomorrow, Luthor.” The name should sting. The name usually stings. It doesn’t. Lena thinks that it should make her flinch, should make her tense up and close off and yet it doesn’t. It doesn’t feel like an insult. It isn’t hurled like some taunt. It’s friendly and familiar and it makes her feel warm like it did when she first got the name, when she was young and believed that the name meant pride, and honour, and family. Lena stops the panic she can see in Kara’s wide eyes from spreading any further with a soft kiss to her cheek and a gentle smile.

“I look forward to being proven wrong.”

“Unfortunately today you’ll have to endure tough beef,” Eliza interrupts, leading them to the table.

“I love tough beef,” Lena replies without missing a beat.

“Oh, she’s a keeper.” Dinner is nice. The food is fine but sitting eating dinner is nice. It’s nice watching Kara interact with her mother and it’s nice being asked about her life by people who genuinely seem to want to know the answer.

Eliza doesn’t pry, doesn’t start conversations about things that Lena always tries to avoid. She asks her about new projects and about how, whilst she doesn’t condone the item being mass produced at any point, she was very curious about how Lena had managed to design the alien detection device to recognise all aliens. Lena talks about her extreme difficulties and the immense amount of time spent on the device whilst giving Kara the side eye because she’s smart enough to recognise a shoddily fried circuit when she sees one (Kara at least has the decency to look a little bad).

It feels like she thinks a family dinner should - not that she really had the best experiences to base that opinion off, most of hers consisted of snide remarks and conspiratorial eye rolls. Lena offers to help clean up after she’s finished swallowing beef that almost seemed like it was fighting back but Eliza quickly insists that she’s a guest and leaves her to drink her wine whilst she drags Kara to the kitchen. Lena isn’t oblivious enough to not realise it’s an excuse for them to talk about her but after downing her wine and turning no more than two pages in a photo album from the coffee table she can’t help but feel the need to offer her help again.

She doesn’t mean to listen in when she reaches the door and hears whispering voices.

She really doesn’t.

She still does it.

 _“I like her.”_ Lena mentally fist pumps hearing Eliza’s words. It wasn’t a diplomatic ‘she seems nice’ or an ‘I like her’ that sounded like she was simply waiting to add the ‘but’. It was simple but sincere and Lena had actually managed to pull this thing off for Kara.

 _“I really like her too.”_ That makes her stop in her mental tracks. That makes her whole body halt because it doesn’t sound like Kara’s usual cheery tone, doesn’t sound like the words have fallen from a smile. It sounds wistful and resigned and it smacks into Lena without warning.

_“Then why do you look so worried?”_

_“Have you ever liked someone so much, like so much, like...”_

_“Love.”_ Lena counts the seconds the silence stretches by the beats her heart skips. It doesn’t sound like a question. Just a statement. A statement that Kara hasn’t contested and Lena finds herself wishing she could see Kara’s face, could know exactly what Kara was thinking.

_“It’s just...I’ve never felt this way before. I mean, I thought I loved James but I- this feels- I don’t even know how to explain it, and I’m so scared that this doesn’t mean as much to her as it does to me. What if to her this is more about convenience than... love.”_

_“Sweetheart, that girl looks at you like you’re magic.”_ Lena thinks that’s a good way to describe it, a good way to describe Kara. Magic. Kara was the first soft thing in her harsh world in a while. The first person she’d let past her walls in years - the first person she had even let realise that there were even walls to get past, that she wasn’t just an ice cold bitch with a Luthor brand. She was the one last light when everyone else left her in darkness. She was hope. Warmth. _Magic._

_“What if she’s just really good at acting?”_

_“No one’s that good at acting.”_

“I promise I wasn’t snooping but I did happen to stumble upon this photo album and now I’m very curious about young Kara Danvers,” Lena says, announcing herself when she comes to the realisation that she should probably stop eavesdropping at some point (she also really was excited to hear some embarrassing stories about Kara).

“You came to the right place.”

“Eliza!” And now she was even more excited.

“Shush, Kara, this is a rite of passage.” No matter how many stories Eliza tells Lena can’t stop thinking about it. Driving home she can’t stop thinking about it. Even with Kara happily singing in the seat beside her she can’t stop thinking about it. It being Kara actually liking her, or more specifically, it being Kara actually liking her and Lena having an internalised freak out about it because she wasn’t sure the correct way to turn a fake relationship into a real relationship.

“This isn’t the way to my apartment.”

“Astute observation. It is, however, the way to the ice cream parlour you like.”

“Rao, I love you.” It’s just something you say. The kind of thing Kara always says when someone offers her food. She said it to Winn just last week when he bought her extra fries, but it hits a little too close to home, and Lena wants to hear it for real. She wants to say it back. She wants to admit that she realised she wasn’t really faking it ever.

Instead she smiles tenderly at Kara and gets a double scoop of chocolate that she figures will keep her mouth busy enough that she won’t accidentally say something she’ll regret. She wants to say something. She does. She just needs to figure out how to say it, needs it to be perfect.

She wants to say something.

Just not yet.

* * *

 

Lena can’t find the right time. She’s been trying for over week. Ten whole days of attempts since they had dinner with Eliza and she couldn’t seem to find the exact right time.

The first time was in Kara’s apartment. Kara had made Lena the dinner she promised and she had to admit she actually was a good cook when she wasn’t panicking about asking something of Lena - which was really to say that nothing was burned, the seasoning was good and it was clear that Kara hadn’t managed to accidentally mix up the salt and the sugar again.

Lena debates telling her halfway through dinner when Kara gets a little overzealous with her fork and shoves way too much food in her mouth. She tries to tell her as she wipes stray sauce from Kara’s face and licks it off her own thumb without hesitation. She tries to force the words out as Kara blushes and stutters but she finds herself struggling to get her own words out. Instead she tells Kara that she was right in saying she could cook and delights in the pleased smile she receives.

Next time, she tells herself.

She’ll do it next time.

She doesn’t do it next time. Next time being three days later when Kara drags her away from late night paper work to go have a drink. She doesn’t expect it to end with the two of them playing pool, just like she doesn’t expect Kara to be so utterly terrible at the game. She shouldn’t let herself fall into the _‘teach me’_ trap but she does. Lena falls into it hard enough that she finds the curves of her body pressed snugly against Kara’s back, her mouth close enough to graze the shell of her ear, her hands steadily guiding Kara’s fidgeting ones. Kara cleanly snaps a pool cue in two and Lena doesn’t say a word (be it a joke or a confession).

The night ends with Kara a little too drunk and a little too giggly, and Lena almost drunk enough to let her lips get loose. She doesn’t. She doesn’t because she’s still sober enough to know that they both deserve more than a drunken confession spilled under the dim lights of a slightly dodgy bar, amongst the smell of spilled beer and something else that Lena would rather not dwell upon. She calls her driver to take them home and tucks Kara into bed with imprecise hands and foggy vision.

She almost says it, almost admits everything, when Kara looks up at her from her cocoon with a look that Lena had never been looked at with before. A look that’s uninhibited, and unrestrained, and uncensored. A look that said Kara was giving her all to memorise every inch of Lena bathed in pale moonlight. A look that said Lena was beautiful with smudged makeup and dishevelled her. A look that said Kara wanted to say more too.

Neither of them do.

That Friday finds them at the animal shelter and it’s even harder to not say anything when Kara is swarmed by dogs, and cats, and that one turtle that she gets oddly attached to, because she looks insanely pretty when she smiles brightly at Lena and attempts to get her to take them all home (and God knows Lena almost gives in to going from no pets to twenty).

But she can’t tell Kara there. Can’t announce to Kara that she’s in love with her with a camera stuffed in their faces because it won’t be real or, it will be real but Kara won’t think it’s real because she seems to be under the impression that it’s more likely that Lena is an award winning level actress, than that Lena is in love with her. Still she almost slips and she silently curses the camera which probably only captured photo after photo of her smiling adoringly at Kara as she darts around the room, seeing how many dogs she can possibly carry in her arms at once.

(The answer is a solid five).

Lena almost tells Kara on Saturday because a simple text saying her head ached a little results in frantic knocks on her door ten minutes later and a flustered Kara carrying every kind of pain killer she could possibly have bought off the shelf, mumbling about how she didn’t know which one worked best or what kind Lena liked. Lena hugs her until Kara realises she won’t be freed anytime soon and simply carries Lena until they’re both happily snuggled on the sofa. Lena falls asleep with Kara lowly chuckling at the show she put on and the words on the tip of her tongue.

She tries to tell her on Sunday. She reaches up to knock on the door with a shaky hand and flowers gripped so tightly in the other she thinks she’s almost definitely drawing blood, though she still manages to clench her fist tighter when the door flies open before her knuckles can even make contact.

She doesn’t expect Mon-El, looking both disheartened and angry, the latter flaring up when he catches sight of a nervous Lena who somehow finds it in herself to look menacing when he scoffs at her appearance. As he storms down the corridor, Lena finds that his appearance makes her want to confess to Kara more. Not to spite him. No. She wants to tell her because she’s afraid Kara might give up on her, afraid that Kara might think she never has a chance with Lena and give in to the little voice in the back of her mind telling her that Lena is just that good at acting and there’s no point.

Lena almost blurts it out. Then she sees Kara curled in on herself on the couch and she knows it’s not the right time. So Lena holds her and tells her stories that she’s never told anyone before in the hopes of making her laugh - like the time she managed to burn her eyebrows off in the lab, and when she let a pig loose in Lillian’s summer house just to hear her shriek, and the fuck you bouquet Lena sent her when she failed to show up for her college graduation.

(They do the trick).

By the time the night ends with Kara’s head resting on her chest, secured by Lena’s sure grip, she almost hopes that Kara will figure it out from the way her heart is thundering in her chest but she doesn’t say a word and Lena drifts off peacefully into the silence, sure that she’ll tell her tomorrow.

She almost tells Kara three times on Monday alone but she chickens out every time.

The first time is when she finds a coffee sitting on her desk the moment she walks in, a coffee that is her exact order in spite of how ridiculously long and complicated it is. She knows it’s from Kara from the smiley face drawn on the side and she almost sends a long winded text about her feelings. She types. Then deletes. Then types again and once again deletes until she settles on a simple heart.

The second time, Kara appears with lunch, and Lena has never wanted to kiss someone more in her life than when Kara places a burger from her favourite diner downtown in front of her. Thankfully she stops herself from being reckless. Less thankfully she achieves that by taking a monstrous bite from her burger and admirably attempting to chew it daintily as Kara’s laugher echoes raucously.

The third is just before she falls asleep. Her heart races for a moment when she receives a text in panic that she’ll have to go back to work, or sort out something last minute. It settles when she reads Kara’s name, only to start up crazily again when she reads the words _sweet dreams_. And it’s not the words. It’s not even the sentiment. It’s the fact that in the late hours of the night, when Kara herself was presumably on her last leg, she thought of Lena. Lena was the last thing she thought of when she went to sleep, the person she wanted to have good dreams above all else.

Lena almost tells Kara for the third time on a mundane Monday.

Instead she goes to sleep.

And then it’s Tuesday. It’s Tuesday and she’s spent ten days trying to find the perfect time, scrambling to find the perfect words. It’s Tuesday, and she reads the same line on a report five times before she just gives in and realises there’s no right time. There’s no right words. There’s no right place. There’s just Lena - afraid but wanting, _oh so wanting_ \- and Kara, who was apparently just as afraid and just as wanting, and what the hell was Lena doing?!

“Jess, clear my schedule.” Is the last thing Lena says as she wraps her coat around herself and hastily descends the stairs. She takes her shoes off after the first flight when she realises what a ridiculous idea this was. She keeps going. She can’t afford to stand around in an elevator. She can’t stop now.

She ignores the voice of her security guard as she sprints through the lobby and only again does she slip on her shoes when she bursts through the front doors of L-Corp. Lena’s acutely aware of the attention she’s receiving as she pushes through crowds of people, and rushes across the street when she definitely shouldn’t, and she knows her outburst will make news tomorrow but she doesn’t care.

She doesn’t care because she’s waited long enough. She’s held this in long enough. They both deserve for her to finally say something, finally put an end to this ruse, and they’ve already gone about this whole thing completely backwards anyway so she may as well go for it.

She crams herself in an open elevator when she makes it to CatCo and immediately regrets it as she stands, fidgets really, listening to generic music and the ramblings of some disgruntled employee that she doesn’t have the focus to glare into silence at that particular moment. She trickles out the doors the moment they open, stumbles past James without acknowledging his greeting, fumbles her way through a crowd that’s formed around a man who she’s sure isn’t being paid to spray paint a phallus on his desk (though the box with a plant in it suggests he was no longer being paid at all).

And then she sees Kara.

Lena stops.

Kara turns.

And Lena once again wonders how she’s supposed to say it, what words she should use, if she should start from the beginning, or the now, or the somewhere in between when it all hit her like a freight train.

And then it clicks.

She starts forward again.

“Lena, what-“ Kara tries when Lena’s the last step away; until she finds her remaining words being painted against Lena’s lips because if she can’t find the right words then maybe she can show her.

Lena kisses Kara like she’s breathing her last breaths, like if these are her last seconds on earth she can thinking of nowhere else she’d rather be than pressed into Kara’s warmth, enveloped by her essence. She kisses her earnestly like there aren’t at least twenty people watching them with wide eyes around the room.

She kisses her slowly but wholly like she’s a ship desperate for the shore, resigning herself to crash upon Kara’s mouth with each new brush of their lips. Lena kisses Kara like she’s trying to pour herself inside her, trying to lose herself in everything that Kara is and that they can be, and she hopes Kara understands, hopes she can feel everything that Lena feels. She pulls away with one last chaste kiss and then simply examines the way Kara’s jaw goes slack, the way she adamantly refuses to open her eyes, the way her body tilts like it’s trying to dive back in.

“ _Oh,_ ” Kara mumbles and Lena can’t help the grin that spreads across her lips when blue eyes drift open because she can see the wonder in them, and the frazzled bewilderment, and the slight hint of confusion that Lena should definitely clear up now before she ends up stuck in this cycle again.

“Yeah, _oh_. To be clear, that wasn’t fake, just like my feelings aren’t fake. Honestly, the way they’ve never been fake.” Because the more Lena thinks about it, the more she realises it wasn’t the kiss that made her fall in love with Kara - it was merely the moment she stopped ignoring what was right in front of her.

Lena loved Kara when she was freaking out about articles and bemoaning the term ‘gal pals’. Lena loved Kara when she was mumbling thinly veiled threats through a mindboggling smile. She loved her when she was singing in the car. She loved her when she shoved way too much food in her mouth (which was apparently every time she ate). She loved her when she was sharing secrets about her past that no one had thought to ask before and letting Lena open up in return.

“Feelings?” Kara asks and Lena isn’t hiding anymore.

“I’m in love with you.” Plain. Simple. Evidently the right way to go because Kara kisses her again and Lena thinks she’d do just about anything for her soft mouth and gentle hands - including being catcalled until they’re both laughing too much to keep kissing at all.

“To be clear, I’m in love with you too.”

* * *

 

“So... when you...”

“Not fake. _Definitely not fake_.”

“I told you it would be out of this world.”


End file.
